Reliability/availability guarantees of gas turbine and combined cycle generating units

This paper is intended to provide the guidance, structure, and refinement needed for meaningful reliability measurements and reliability warranties for gas turbine-based generating facilities. Four key areas of reliability measurement: starting reliability; running reliability; availability; and equivalent availability are separately explored. Within each of these areas there is the flexibility and the need to adapt the measurement system to the varied operating regimes and philosophies encountered such as: peaking versus continuous service; limited scopes of supply; different levels of maintenance intensity; chargeable versus nonchargeable outage events; and emotional/political/optical acceptability (i.e., 3% forced outage factor versus 40% forced outage rate). Warranty structuring rationale and suggested contract language are provided to address such needs as a rigorous and explicit operating log, certification of data, measurement uncertainty, assurance of readiness, and risk assessment.<
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