Increasing Generation Capacity by Power Unit Upgrades

Abstract

To ensure Poland’s energy security in the coming years will require increasing the power system’s generation capacity while at the same time improving both the efficiency of electricity generation and its use [1, 2]. One way of achieving this is to revitalize the old units in power plants, thus providing a capacity increase. The most difficult technical problem is to increase the output power and overhaul life of turbogenerator sets. Research has been conducted for 25 years at the Faculty of Electrical Engineering of the Silesian University of Technology aiming at the development of new solutions of a turbogenerator set’s key major structural nodes [3]. Implemented solutions have enabled a turbogenerator set’s output power increase by as much as 20% while extending the overhaul life from 200,000 to as many as 350,000 hours. The paper presents some examples of the upgrade of the largest in the Polish power system group of 200 MW turbogenerator sets. The current status of the study is reported as well as new solutions now developed to enable further increase in turbogenerator power well above 240 MW.