Marubeni, GE Begin Maintenance at Smithfield Cogeneration Plant in Australia

Researched by Industrial Info Resources Australia (Perth, Australia)--GE Australia Pty Limited (New South Wales, Australia), a subsidiary of General Electric (NYSE:GE) (Fairfield, Connecticut), has concluded a contract in Australia with Marubeni Power Development Australia Pty Limited (New South Wales) for a gas turbine service at the Smithfield Combined-Cycle Cogeneration plant in New South Wales. The contract includes the hot gas path (HGP) inspection of the plant's 33-megawatt (MW) MS6001B gas turbine unit; the delivery of new replacement parts; and the reconditioning of old parts.

Marubeni operates the 160-MW Smithfield plant with three 33.3-MW combustion turbines and a 60-MW steam turbine. All of the gas turbines, including the steam turbine, are supplied by GE. The heat-recovery steam generators (HRSG) attached to the gas turbines are manufactured and supplied by CMI EPTI LLC Zurn Nepco and SNC-Lavalin, respectively.

The hot gas path inspection of the gas turbine (Unit 2) will begin in March 2014, and it will involve some minor inspections and repairs to the balance-of-plant equipment. The 10-day maintenance outage will be complete by end of March. The Smithfield plant produces 165 MW for the Smithfield grid and supplies process steam for an adjacent cardboard recycling plant.

Earlier, Marubeni had planned for a major outage on one of the four combined-cycle units in the third quarter of 2014, but the company is now looking to reschedule the maintenance outage or even cancel the scheduled project due to commercial factors. According to plant officials, Marubeni will review the maintenance project in the next few months and might consider options, including mothballing the unit by end of the year. Marubeni will keep the plant up and running with routine inspections and annual maintenance, which goes for three days on each unit. The next major maintenance currently planned will not be until early 2017.

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