GE Signs An Agreement To Maintain Central Puerto's Power Plant In Argentina And Launch Its Digital Transformation

• Site Serves as Model for Latin American Utilities Seeking to Make Their Plants More Reliable and Responsive to Changing Electricity Demands
• Agreement Marks First Time GE Will Bring Its High-Efficiency HA Gas Turbine Technology and Advanced Digital Industrial Solutions to Argentina’s Power Sector
• GE’s APM Digital Solution Will Help Central Puerto to Predict Equipment Failures and Avoid Costly Unplanned Outages

GE recently announced it has signed an extension of a multiyear maintenance services agreement with Central Puerto to support its 760-megawatt (MW) combined-cycle power plant in Buenos Aires for an additional nine years. The over $70M contract includes the first order in Argentina for GE’s advanced digital power plant solutions and extends a nearly two-decade collaboration between Central Puerto and GE to bring reliable and efficient power to the people of Argentina.

Central Puerto recently purchased a GE 9HA.01 gas turbine, with the installation planned for the following years, marking GE’s first order for its advanced-efficiency HA gas turbine technology in the Latin American and Caribbean regions.

“We are pleased this project incorporates the latest digital technology into our multiyear agreement with GE to help us ensure that our Central Puerto power plant operates at the highest levels of reliability and availability,” said José Luis Morea, chief strategy officer of Central Puerto. “This station is crucial to the reliability of the power grid in Buenos Aires, requiring that it operates at the best possible performance levels and generating the equivalent power needed to supply more than 500,000 homes in the country.”

This agreement provides Central Puerto with an array of GE power generation technologies, including a full power station distributed control system upgrade, a liquid fuel filtering system, improved balance of plant equipment as well as comprehensive services to maintain the station’s boilers, condenser and steam turbine.

“With Argentina’s increasing energy demands, power plants such as Central Puerto are finding innovative ways to improve the reliability and performance of their plant operations to address the country’s needs,” said Ramon Paramio, regional general manager of GE’s Power Services business in Latin America. “GE’s total plant solutions allow us to enhance our offerings to provide the latest digital technologies, which will help Central Puerto be better positioned to compete in a fast growing power generation marketplace.”

Powered by Predix, GE’s advanced cloud-based operating system built exclusively for the industry, the Asset Performance Management (APM) software application will draw data to monitor, analyze, enhance and predict equipment health at Central Puerto. The APM’s anomaly detection capability will help Central Puerto predict outages before they happen, which ultimately improves the power plant’s reliability, enables just-in-time maintenance improvement and reduces plant downtime.

Using a network of thousands of sensors placed throughout the 760-MW, combined-cycle power plant, GE’s APM predictive maintenance system can help to increase the station’s reliability and availability while reducing unnecessary maintenance costs. The APM offers early warnings of failure mechanisms about plant components that are about to fail and allowing the Central Puerto team to more efficiently manage outages.

The 9HA is GE’s largest gas turbine and holds the Guinness World Records title for powering the most efficient combined-cycle power plant with a total efficiency of up to 62.22 percent at the EDF power plant in Bouchain, France.

Central Puerto is a leading generation company in Argentina responsible for providing 17 percent of the country’s power production and has a long relationship with GE. In addition to the Central Puerto power plant, the utility owns several additional generation plants, two of them with GE gas turbine units in Mendoza and Ensenada. GE has maintained the Central Puerto’s Buenos Aires station since 2000.