Operating economy benefits of improved gas turbine reliability

The potential operating economy benefits of improved reliability for generating plants using advanced gas turbines in integrated gasification combined cycle and simple cycle applications are evaluated using an expanded probabilistic production cost model. Results obtained for four reduced EPRI regional model systems indicate that initial capital investments in the range of $2 to $7 million dollars per gas turbine could be economically justified by future operating cost savings. The study also explores the expected cost per failure event and per MWh of energy not supplied by the gas turbine due to forced plant outages. These results are shown to be highly dependent on the fuel and capacity mix of the system as well as on the forecasts of fuel price differences