Technology

We deliver projects with proven technology in power augmentation, advanced controls, predictive maintenance, and other power plant improvement fields—ensuring higher efficiency, reliability, and operational value for today’s high-performance natural gas power plants.

1 | Turbine Inlet Air Cooling

Graph showing high performance of turbine inlet air cooling

Turbine Inlet Air Cooling (TIAC) lowers the temperature of outside air going in to a turbine to increase mass flow and power output, particularly during peak summer weather. Gas turbines are constant volume machines in which power output depends directly on air density. As ambient temperature increases, air density decreases, reducing mass flow rate and power generation capacity. Our cooling technologies restore optimal performance by increasing inlet air density through precise temperature control.

Major turbine inlet cooling technologies:

Evaporative Cooling: Adiabatic media coupled with advanced water treatment (demineralized, closed loop) ensures minimal scaling risk. Evaporative cooling reduces inlet air temperature through water evaporation in wetted fiber media. As hot inlet air passes through continuously wetted honeycomb cellulose pads, water evaporates and absorbs heat, cooling the air by up to 20°F. This results in increasing the power output from the gas turbine typically by about 5-15%, depending on local humidity conditions. These systems require minimal maintenance and are most effective in hot, dry climates where evaporation potential is the highest.

Wet Compression/Fogging: Advanced water injection technology sprays ultra-fine demineralized water droplets directly into the gas turbine inlet and compressor. Droplets evaporate inside the compressor, providing intercooling effects that reduce compression work and increase available shaft power. This creates a power boost of 5-10% for each 1% of mass flow injected. Therefore, injecting 2% of mass flow with water can increase gas turbine power output by up to 20%. This technology can also help to reduce NOx emissions and is particularly effective for gas turbines supporting renewable energy integration and load following applications.

Mechanical Chilling: Uses refrigeration cycles to cool inlet air to precise temperatures regardless of ambient humidity conditions. Chilled water flows through cooling coils installed in the filter house, providing consistent temperature control. Power output increases of 15-25% are common and technology functions effectively from 47°F (8°C) to 115°F (46°C). The addition of Thermal Ice Storage (TIS) can provide load shifting capabilities to enhance overall system performance, economics, and reliability compared to mechanical chilling alone.

2 | Predictive Maintenance

Gas turbine predictive maintenance dashboard

Our Predictive Maintenance (PdM) suite anticipates turbine subsystem issues by capturing and analyzing real-time operational data.

Technical features:

Sensor Fusion: Integrates vibration, temperature (hot-and-cold sections), rotor bow, combustion dynamics, and acoustic emissions.
Analytics & AI: Utilizes ensemble machine learning models — random forests, LSTM networks, Bayesian change-point detection — trained on OEM failure modes and augmented with your historical logs.
Digital Twin Capability: Simulates “health index” trajectories across turbines, calculating remaining useful life (RUL), with confidence intervals for failure timing.
Edge and Cloud Hybrid Architecture: Time-critical anomaly detection runs on edge gateways; full analytics, cross-plant benchmarking, and long-term trend analytics hosted in the secure cloud.
Visual Dashboard: Real-time asset health dashboards, data visualization, customizable alert thresholds, and CMMS integration (e.g., SAP PM, IBM Maximo).
ROI Impact: Case studies show a 30–50% reduction in unplanned outages and 10–20% improvement in maintenance planning efficiency.

3 | Advanced Controls

Power plant professionals using advanced controls to optimize power

Upgrading turbine controls—from legacy PLC/HMI/DCS to full-stack digital control systems—drives optimized performance, emissions control, and cyber resilience.

Technical capabilities:

Model Predictive Control (MPC): Implements multi-variable MPC over turbine cycles to manage load transitions with minimal overshoot and lower emissions.
High-Fidelity Combustion Tuning: Closed loop tuning continuously adjusts fuel/air mix using high-speed data (flame scanners, thermocouples), optimizing NOₓ and CO emissions within OEM and regulatory tolerances.
Renewable Load Integration: Fast-ramping controls tuned for grid-following and frequency response enable enhanced dispatch flexibility for hybrid and peaker applications.
Secure Control Implementation: IEC 62443-aligned cybersecurity measures, including secure OPC UA, segmented network zones, and hardened firmware—ready for IEC 61508 SIL-compliance if needed.

Legacy System Retrofit Expertise: We design facades for existing PLCs/DCS that upgrade human-machine interaction and control logic without full hardware replacement.

4 | Battery Energy Storage Systems (BESS)

When used to power your plant, intelligent battery systems often reduce demand charges by 30-60%. A 3-5 MW system, for example, delivers $2-3M annual savings with zero capital cost through our turnkey project financing.