LM2500 assessment: Control components leading contributors outages

Posted on April 3, 2013 by Team CCJ

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Its unanimous. Control systems and their componentsincluding controllers, cards, and gas- fuel modulating valveswere the major contributors to forced outages in 2012 for each of the fleets supported by the Western Turbine Users Inc: LM2500, LM5000, LM6000, and LMS100. Details on the Top Ten contributors to forced-outage incidents involving the LM2500 were presented to the breakout session chaired by John Baker, plant manager, Riverside Public Utilities, by Cindy Alicea and Karl Maier of Charlotte-based Strategic Power Systems Inc (SPS), during WTUIs 2013 annual meeting in San Diego, recently concluded. SPSs Operational Reliability Analysis Program (ORAP) provides the companys engineers and analysts the data and tools to develop and track performance metrics of gas and steam turbines across all OEMs and a broad range of owner/operators. Alicea and Maier began their presentation by reviewing the performance of LM2500s in electric generation service from January 2008 through December 2012. Note that this study covered the base engine only, not the LM2500+ or the LM2500+G4. Over the five-year evaluation period, peaking machines (service factor of less than 10%) accumulated 44 unit-years of service; cycling (service factor from 10% up to 50%), 146 unit-years; and base-load engines (service factor of 50% and above), 400 unit-years. Highlights of the analysis, which incorporated data for the 134 LM2500s participating in ORAP, revealed the following: Fleet availability (simple-cycle plant), Forced-outage factor, 0.8%with peaking engines Maintenance outage factor, 98.3%. at 2.6%. 0.2%.

 Planned outage factor, 0.7%. Service factor (the percentage of time units are generating power), 66.1%. By consensus, the LM2500 is the most versatile engine in GEs aero portfolio. The machine has been uprated and improved several times since its commercial introduction at the dawn of the 1970s and has racked up more than 60-million operating hours over the years. You can find the LM2500 in utility/IPP peaking, cogeneration, and combined-cycle plants, as well as in trailer-mounted emergency/standby packages, drilling-platform service, mechanical-drive applications (gas pipeline compressor drivers, for example), industrial combined heat and power, and marine main propulsion systems. Interestingly, six of the Top Ten contributors to forced-outage incidents for the LM2500 also are among the LM6000s Top Ten. Grid instability is No. 2 on both lists, external circumstances is No. 3 on the LM2500 and No. 4 on the LM6000. Other causes of outages common to both engines are gas-pipeline conditions, distributed control system (DCS), and gasfuel modulating valve. Failures associated with control systems controllers, DCSs, and gas-fuel modulating valvesaccounted for 37% of the forced outages charged against the Top Ten contributors in 2012, two percentage points higher than for the LM6000. SPS engineers broke down the Top Ten leader, controls/controllers/communication, into subcategories, as they had done for the other engines investigated. It was no surprise that incidents involving control cards was at the top of the list. But for the LM2500 they accounted for 41% of the incidents in the No. 1 category, nearly double the 21% recorded for the LM6000. Logic suggests a higher percentage of old cards in the more mature LM2500 fleet. Loose cabling was second, accounting for 18% forced outages among the subcategories in controls/controllers/communication. Causes of the remaining outages were distributed about equally among communication error, software, power supply, human error, testing, and unknown. Nearly half (44%) of the incidents within the No. 2 grid instability category were attributed to relay trip. External circumstances, third among the 10 leading causes of outages, was dominated by a mixed bag of host-site issues for LM2500s in cogeneration service, poor gas quality, and strikes by union employees. More than half of the outages attributed to gas pipeline conditions, No. 4, were caused by users or valve issues. Failure to start was fifth in the ranking, with root causes not mentioned in virtually all instances.

Likewise, causes of outages involving flame detectors, No. 6, were unknown in 65% of the incidents. Most of the remainder were attributed to dirty detectors, which operated correctly after cleaning. Nearly half of the failures of the distributed control system, No. 7, were caused by communication signal loss. Remainder were divided among out-of-tune, blown fuse, electrical short, and unknown. Lightning outages amounted to 10 incidents that lasted less than five hours each and five more than 10 hours each. The data submitted to SPS indicated that more than half the outages attributed to issues with the gas-fuel modulating valve probably could have been avoided with periodic checking of calibration. Battery (125 Vdc) incidents finished at the bottom of the Top Ten. Age was a significant factor, as more than 90% of the failures were related to mismatched battery age/condition. Only two categories on the Top Ten list of contributors to forced outages by numbers of eventscontrols/controllers/communication and external circumstancesmade SPSs Top Ten ranking by outage hours. In fact, the average outage for all incidents in categories two through 10 lasted only six and a half hours; the average outage attributed to controls/controllers/communication was much longer at 29.5 hours. The Top Ten list of outage causes by hours of downtime was dominated by issues that rarely occurred. For example, No. 1 on this list was outages caused by incorrect positions of compressor process valves each of the three incidents averaging five weeks of downtime. Causes of other high-hours outages include compressor, power turbine, airfoil issues, etceven the lowly exhaust plenum.