FL - Unit 5 Not Alone in Operation Troubles

Saturday, February 10, 2001

By RICK ROUSOS The Ledger

LAKELAND -- Lakeland Electric's troubled $55 million gas turbine generator has a manufacturer's serial number of 001. In Charlton, Mass., a generator also manufactured by Siemens-Westinghouse is labeled 002.

Serial numbers 001 and 002 have many things in common. Here are two: Neither has worked for an extended period of time. And neither is working now.

"We're still in the midst of some technical problems," said Mark Winne, the general manager of the Charlton operation, which is called the Millennium Project and is owned by PG&E Generating, a private company.

Lakeland's 249-megawatt generator, called Unit 5 at the McIntosh power plant overlooking Lake Parker, was supposed to begin operating in April 1999. Since then it has worked only 85 days.

The most recent problem occurred Dec. 20 when it was cranked up to meet demand at the beginning of a cold spell, but it ran only four hours before a "hard crash" brought it to a grinding halt. The crash was prompted by a fire in a cylinder that surrounds a compressor.

Lakeland Electric was forced to buy $663,000 of power during three of December's coldest days.

Siemens-Westinghouse officials said the fire was started by either fuel oil or lubrication oil and not by the natural gas that powers the turbine.

Unit 5 should be working by the end of next week, said Roger Greenwood, a Siemens-Westinghouse project director.

Lakeland will connect Unit 5 to a second, $73 million unit that is being assembled now at the McIntosh site. Officials say it will be ready to go late this year. The city is paying $32 million more for the second unit than the price estimated in 1998.

The second generator will capture heat from the first unit and use it to generate 120 more megawatts of electricity. Together, the two units are called a combined-cycle generator and should produce a total of 369 megawatts of power.

Critics of Unit 5 say Lakeland may have had fewer problems if the city had bought the combined cycle rather than trying to do the project in stages.

But in Charlton, which is southwest of Worcester, PG&E bought a combined-cycle operation. So far, it hasn't worked any better than Unit 5.

This statement by Winne, the general manager of the Charlton operation, does not bode well for the short-term future of Unit 5 in Lakeland: "Many of the problems that we've had have been in trying to combine our two units."

Winne would not say how much PG&E paid for the combined-cycle generators and since PG&E is a private company, he is not required to do so.

The keys to the Millennium Project were supposed to be handed over to PG&E in August, with months to spare for the combined-cycle generators to begin working before Jan. 1.

But a series of technical problems have kept the generators from working.

Greenwood, the Siemens-Westinghouse project director, said the company has so far gotten the turbine to run at 70 percent of its capacity.

"We have had a substantial load on it," he said.

The combined-cycle unit is cooled with steam. A pipe leading to a steam-cooling apparatus broke when the turbine was running and caused the latest setback in Charlton. Vibrations caused the pipe to break.

The start-up is now planned for late March or early April.

In addition to both operations not working so far, the Lakeland and Charlton projects are similar in another way. Officials in both locations are saying they think their generators will work soon.

"I think we're close to the finish line," said Winne.

"We've got brilliant engineers, and they're working conservatively. From the layman, we hear, 'This is taking forever.' But when you want to do it right, it takes time."

While the generators in Lakeland and Charlton share many similarities, they have one main difference.

In Charlton, only PG&E and its investors stand to lose money if the generator continues not to work. Massachusetts now operates in a deregulated environment. PG&E is forbidden from passing along rate hikes to cover losses cause by a generator that doesn't work.

But in Lakeland, city taxpayers own Unit 5. Lakeland Electric officials say they're still making enough electricity to cover the demand for their customers.

But the city-owned utility turns over millions of dollars to the city government every year -- including $18 million last year. The long-term excellent health of city finances is threatened if Unit 5 continues to fail.

After paying a total $128 million for the combined-cycle generator, everyone agrees that Lakeland needs it to work.

Five of the seven current Lakeland city commissioners voted to buy the gas turbine generator in October 1997. Commissioners Jim Verplanck and Seth McKeel are new to the commission.

The five commissioners who gave their "yes" votes to Unit 5 each say they think the generator will work.

"'Yes, I do believe it will work," Lakeland Mayor Buddy Fletcher said Friday. "Siemens-Westinghouse has got too much at stake for it not to work. They've got 30 of these things sold."

http://www.theledger.com/local/local/10turb.htm

-- Doris (nocents@bellsouth.net), February 10, 2001

Answers

"a fire in a cylinder that surrounds a compressor". This must be a new hybrid engine GE sired when they mated a reciprocating engine with a gas turbine. No wonder the beast doesn't work right; it's a freak and should be destroyed.

-- David Williams (DAVIDWILL@prodigy.net), February 11, 2001.