Not a Russian business at all
Russia has neglected the development of its own energy gas turbine building, now it is important to accumulate high-tech competencies at factories built in the country by foreign companies
The launch ceremony of the Siemens Gas Turbine Technologies (STGT) plant, a joint venture of Siemens and Power Machines, dedicated to the opening of the St. Petersburg Economic Forum, took place at the Greenstate industrial park in Gorelovo, in the south of St. Petersburg, 18 June. The importance of the event was emphasized by the presence of high leaders - the Russian side, in particular, was represented by State Duma Speaker Sergei Naryshkin and Leningrad Region Governor Alexander Drozdenko, the German side by Siemens AG board member Siegfried Russvurm. However, the participation of the head of the Russian deputies corps, judging by his opening speech with noticeable anti-American rhetoric, should have rather emphasized a simple thesis: despite the sanctions, high-tech cooperation with European countries and companies continues. The project itself, claimed speakers (among whom were from the Russian side were First Deputy Energy Minister Alexei Teksler, and General Director of Power Machines Roman Filippov), would contribute to accelerating the modernization of domestic energy, as well as strengthen economic ties between countries in difficult political conditions.
Lost leadership
Undoubtedly, the opening of such a plant is another step in the development of high-tech production in Russia. And this news from the category of very good. Gas turbines will be produced in Gorelovo - high-tech power equipment, justifiably considered the pinnacle of a high-tech high-tech machine-building plant, while the plant itself, which employs about 300 specialists, is equipped with modern equipment, including unique machines for plasma spraying of turbine parts, laser welding and water-jet cutting. There are only three similar enterprises and engineering divisions for the production of high-capacity gas turbines from Siemens in the world: in Berlin, German Müllheim and American Charlotte.
The product line of the St. Petersburg joint venture includes two gas turbines with a capacity of 172 and 307 MW, but later the site can also be used to assemble GT of lower power. The works on piping, assembling and packaging of centrifugal compressor equipment intended for the transportation of natural gas will be arranged here, and in the future they will begin to manufacture the compressor modules themselves. But now it's not about the blowers. For us, it is important to be able to produce high-power GTs, albeit under the Siemens trademark. And that's why.
Power engineering (EMC) and the electrical industry are high-tech sectors of the real economy that testify to the technological viability of any state. Gas turbine engineering is the industry peak of power engineering, which keeps the whole production and innovation sphere in good shape. Until relatively recently, only a limited circle of states possessed their own EMC, and developed gas turbine engineering, including both energy and aviation and ship engines, even fewer initiates; almost until the end of the XNUMXth century, their number in the world did not exceed a dozen: Great Britain, Germany, Italy, USSR / Russia, USA, Switzerland, Sweden, France, Japan. Later, the pool of countries producing such equipment was replenished at the expense of developing countries (primarily, of course, about China). But we went a peculiar way in this area of technology.
It so happened that the USSR, having been since the beginning of the 70-s of the last century as the undisputed technological leader of the energy gas turbine building (the first production machines in the world, 100 MW, were produced at the Leningrad Metal Plant). This happened primarily due to the fact that the country moved towards powerful nuclear, hydro and thermal stations, and subsequent difficult attempts to create an 80-megawatt GTU on the LMZ were simply lost in the grandeur of the Soviet energy swing. Cheap energy resources have finished the trend to abandon the gas-turbine and steam-gas subjects that promised resource-saving, as a result, the Soviet Union (and after its collapse, Russia) was left without its high-capacity GTU.
By the end of the first decade of the 21st century, the only gas turbine, which, with an eye on history The issue (the roots of the turbine go back to Soviet-era naval development, and it was designed at the Zarya-Mashproekt design bureau in Ukrainian Nikolaev) can be called domestic, was the GTU-110, which, with the support of Anatoly Chubais, was brought to mind in the Saturn NGO in Rybinsk But they did not bring it, and now out of five such turbines installed at two stations in Ivanovo and Ryazan, only one worked last year. After the closure of RAO UES and the departure of the hot supporter of the development of the company's general director Yury Lastochkin in 2010, its improvement has essentially ceased (for more details, see “Need a national gas turbine project” in Expert No. 11 for 2010 a year). Representatives of the current owners of the Rybinsk enterprise, the United Motion Corporation (UEC), do not speak out clearly and publicly about the continuation of this work. But the UEC, together with the state-owned company Inter RAO UES, set up a joint venture in 2011 there, in Rybinsk, in order to build a competitive gas turbine plant for Saturnovsky in partnership with General Electric. Now the first two GTUs with a capacity of 77 MW are being built there on the order of Rosneft.
The market is delivered. Are the technologies adopted?
GTU and PGU (combined-cycle plant) are still the main abbreviations for our electric power industry. Gas now dominates the fuel balance of power plants - it produces, according to the Ministry of Energy of last year, more than 44% of Russian electricity. Upgrading gas thermal power plants and transferring them from the steam cycle to the steam and gas cycle could save up to a quarter of those 160s with more than billion billion cubic meters of natural gas that are mostly burned in condensing power boilers with 38 percent efficiency. PGU is a much more efficient gas utilization tool. In the best modern models of CCGTs, including those built on the basis of those turbines that are planned to be produced at the plant in Gorelovo, the efficiency reaches 60%.
In the past five years, the market for energy gas turbines thanks to contracts for the provision of capacity (CDMs were invented during the “Chubais” sector reform for guaranteed state reimbursement to the investor of funds invested in construction and partly in the modernization of power plants) - the most rapidly developing demand. on the equipment segment of new power plants. Only in 2014, at the expense of the CCGT in the country, more than 3,2 GW of new capacities were commissioned at the large TPPs included in the Unified Energy System of Russia. However, almost all of this market is at the mercy of foreign manufacturers, primarily Siemens and General Electric.
Only SGT5 – 4000F with power from 270 to 285 MW (the modern version of 307 MW) - these are the ones to be assembled in Gorelovo - eleven units are already in operation in Russia, seven more projects are at different stages of implementation. This means that Siemens has supplied equipment for the CCGT to Russia, the installed capacity of which is approaching 7,5 GW, which is more than the country has launched nuclear power units for the entire post-Soviet period! According to the company itself, the total power of Siemens gas turbines made by Siemens technology, including small and medium-sized machines sold in Russia, exceeds 13 GW. General Electric lags behind Siemens in terms of installed capacity, but this company’s account for deliveries goes to gigawatts (the author of these lines counted more than 20 turbines from 77 to 256 MW with a total power of about 2 GW installed by GE on Russian TPPs only in 2010 – 2012 years ).
For the Russian energy sector, the supply of gas turbines by these companies is a pleasant fact, these are excellent cars. But domestic engineering has lost billions of dollars due to the unwillingness of the state to really invest in such an important segment of technology. Thus, it is estimated that only 110 million dollars was spent on the development of the GTD-20 project, and in the USA, the energy department invested more than a billion dollars in developing and fine-tuning H-class turbines in the zero years of our century (not only in GE, but and the current gas turbine division of Westinghouse, owned by Siemens).
There is some positive experience in technology transfer in the industry. In 1991, the Leningrad Metal Plant (now the branch of Power Machines), together with Siemens, organized the Interturbo Joint Venture. The company produced 19 machines V94.2 under the brand name Siemens, which were sold to nine countries of the world, including Russia. In 2001, Power Machines purchased a license for the release of V94.2 under its own brand GTE-160 (in total 35 of such machines was released, of which 31 was made for Russian consumers). The share of domestic components in installations 60%, but the responsible nodes - components of the hot path, pulling the slots in the disks, the electronic part of the control system, the gas fuel unit - remained in the area of responsibility of Siemens.
Localization of free will
At the peak of success, Power Machines developed the GT-65 installation, relying on its replacement and the CCP on its basis of numerous outdated steam turbines with a capacity up to 110 MW. Mosenergo, which supported the project, was soon eliminated - why is it risky to sponsor the expensive development and development of the Russian GTU, when you can buy a ready-made foreign turbine and still get a refund for it under DPM contracts. In 2011, Power Machines, in fact, abandon the independent development of this subject, transferring the gas turbine SKB, which worked for LMZ from 1956, to the new company Siemens Gas Turbine Technologies, which absorbed Interturbo, and assets in the joint venture redistributed in favor of Siemens (65%).
At the newly opened plant, the first SGT5 – 2000E turbine has already been assembled, the share of domestic suppliers is still about 12% at cost. But, according to the director general of STGT Niko Petzold, the company intends to increase it to 70% in accordance with the goals set by the government of the Russian Federation. According to him, several Russian companies are currently undergoing appropriate certification. There are no direct binding documents prescribing the localization program, but the demand from state-owned companies often already provides for a requirement for a certain degree of product localization. Therefore, a top manager says, only by expanding the range and improving the quality of localization, it is possible to get more large-scale access to the rather competitive Russian market of gas turbine products.
In particular, at OMZ Spetsstal plant, technical director of STGT Alexander Lebedev says, from the batch of forgings, the rotor parts for the next turbine - rotor disks, end parts (total 28 components) are already made during supplier certification. And this is a very responsible product, often coming from abroad.
Gradually, the share of Russian manufacturers, including the supply of high-tech components due to their gradual certification according to Siemens standards, will increase. Domestic components will be used in turbines designed for foreign markets.
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