Turbine Upgrade for Geysers Geothermal Power Plant

Abstract

After utilization of The Geysers geothermal reservoir for electric power generation since 1960, the reservoir pressure and the steam flow had declined and performance of the turbine was also degraded. This situation is common not only at The Geysers but also other geothermal power plants. Toshiba performed the turbine upgrade, which included the steam path redesign optimized to the reduced steam inlet deliverability and applied new technology for performance improvement and erosion/corrosion countermeasures, for the geothermal turbines at The Geysers operated and maintained by CALPINE. It’s been successful for improving performance and allowing operation over 8 years without a turbine opening. This paper shows turbine upgrade technology, the outage result after this 8 year run and the performance trend during the run.