The Dubai Electricity and Water Authority (DEWA) has announced that it has broken the world record for inspection outage durations by re-engineering the overhaul process for Siemens’ SGT5-4000F gas turbines. The utility firm says the work at its Jebel Ali Power and Desalination Complex was completed within 11 working days – the previous record was 20 days.
The achievement is said to represent a 63% reduction in outage duration, and increased availability of the gas turbines. DEWA states that the inspection outage period over the next 12 years is expected to result in an increase in the availability and use of the high-efficiency units by 756 days.
“This meets the directives of His Highness Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Vice President and Prime Minister of the UAE and Ruler of Dubai, to continue the path towards excellence and being first in everything. We aim to continuously develop our programmes, plans, and projects to strengthen our competitive position globally level to achieve the highest reliability, efficiency, and savings in operational and maintenance expenditure. This helps us to achieve comprehensive sustainability in line with the themes of the UAE Vision 2021 for the UAE to be one of the best countries in the world by 2021, and the Dubai Plan 2021, to provide the best government services. DEWA set a plan to record this achievement in 2016, when it formed a team to break the world record in outage duration of the largest and most efficient power and water producing gas turbines in DEWA’s fleet,” said HE Saeed Mohammed Al Tayer, MD & CEO of DEWA.
According to a statement, the project aimed to highlight Dubai’s position as a leader in technological transformation. A total of 461 similar turbines are said to be in operation around the world, 46 of which are in the UAE.
The lessons learned from the project and the new benchmark will help global users improve their operating costs, availability of their services and improve their environmental footprint, DEWA said.
“These gas turbines, along with the steam turbines in the same train, provide 63.2% of DEWA’s gas plant power generation capacity, and 55% of the total thermal energy needed to produce desalinated water that DEWA provides to Dubai. This shows the strategic importance of the project to DEWA. In order to ensure its success, a Project Charter was initiated with a clear vision and strategic objectives in line with DEWA’s vision of being a globally leading sustainable innovative corporation,” added Al Tayer.
Nasser Lootah, EVP of Generation at DEWA remarked, “Using various innovative ideas and techniques, a team comprised of over 200 members, including 176 field staff, succeeded in reducing the major inspection outage of the unit GTK53 at K Station in October 2018 to 11 working days, breaking the previous world record of 20 days. To affirm the project’s sustainability, the same period was achieved on the unit GTK52 at K Station in April 2019.”
