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For about a month, the EDF gas-fired power plant in Bouchain, France has been at the heart of an important maintenance operation. For the first time since its installation in 2016, when it was the first GE HA class turbine installed anywhere, nearly 400 people are working to maintain the world’s most efficient gas turbine, including more than 100 experts from FieldCore. They are working to ensure the gas turbine, steam turbine, generator and other parts of the plant are working as efficiently as possible and delivering on our promise for the best running H class turbine in the industry.

“It’s a maintenance where we open the whole machine: the compressor, the combustion chambers, the turbine parts,” said Philippe Lambin, head of the maintenance department at EDF. For our customer, predictable timing and a successful outcome are important because the site produces electricity for the equivalent of 680,000 households. According to the Director of the EDF Bouchain power plant Xavier Delorme, “More than 400 people are involved in this operation. It represents a challenge to have succeeded in mobilizing all these skills at this time of the year and in the midst of the Covid health crisis.”

As FieldCore represents GE’s field execution arm, our teams possess the deep expertise and unique know how to successfully implement the upgrade project at Bouchain, which houses the world’s most efficient 9HA turbine. We work closely with GE Engineering to develop and improve tooling and techniques for outages like this one and in fact, maintenance of the HA class turbine was built into the original design. We will spend about 20,000 hours over the next several weeks conducting maintenance activities during this outage and we are proud to be able to partner with GE and EDF to maintain and upgrade this incredible technology.

TV channel – France-3 has covered the Bouchain Power Station outage in the new report, which you can watch below:

 

INTERESTING FACTS ABOUT THE GUINNESS WORLD RECORD WINNING 9HA TURBINE

  • Bouchain site contains the first ever combined-cycle power plant equipped with GE’s HA gas turbine.
  • Powered by GE, Bouchain is the world’s most efficient combined-cycle power plant.
  • With a generating capability of more than 605MW, the 9HA turbine developed and produced by GE is the world’s most efficient gas turbine, achieving an efficiency rate during commissioning performance tests of up to 62.22%.
  • These record-breaking efficiency levels have created the world’s most efficient combined-cycle power plant at Bouchain, which was officially recognized in April as a Guinness World Record holder.
  • EDF and GE are the first companies to introduce such a flexible and energy efficient gas turbine, to support their client in their challenges of energy production.
  • 9HA is highly flexible, is capable of reaching full power in less than 30 minutes.
  • 9HA turbine weighs as much as a fully loaded Boeing 747.
  • 9HA can generate the amount of power needed to supply more than 680,000 homes.
  • When 9HA turbine burns 3.3 tons of natural gas mixed with air – equivalent to 23 tanker trucks – out comes just 6.3 fluid ounces of pollution, a volume slightly larger than a half-can of soda.

To read more about this world-famous turbine you can also visit the following links:

https://www.ge.com/news/reports/bouchain 

https://www.ge.com/power/about/insights/articles/2016/04/power-plant-efficiency-record

 

 

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