Tag Archive

Adam Beck aircraft automobiles Bill Brooks Blackout borescope Brayton Cycle Central Vermont Public Service Combustion combustor Compression control systems Control Sytems CVPS Exhaust Expansion flame detection Florida Power & Light Florida Power Corp Frame 5 Frank Whittle fuel regulator Gas turbine generators gas turbines George Brayton Georgia Power Great Northeast Blackout Houston Lighting & Power inter-cooled Kilowatt Machine locomotives Long Island Lighting Company package power plants Pal Engineering Philadelphia Electric PLC programmable logic controller regenerative cycle regenerator Rover Rutland Schenectady Tennessee Valley Authority turbines Young & Franklin

Black Start, Chapter Eleven: The Long-awaited Frame 7

Published on October 17, 2011 By dlucier

  In 1971, General Electric finally offered a power plant of the size that most electric utilities wanted 6 years earlier after the Northeast Blackout of 1965.  It was called the model series MS7001 package power plant.   Also known as the Frame 7, it was rated approximately 40 megawatts, making it nearly three times [...]

Black Start, Chapter 10: The Great Northeast Blackout

Published on September 19, 2011 By dlucier

  On November 9, 1965, the northeastern United States experienced a severe power outage.  It came to be known as The Great Northeast Blackout, as many states experienced a power blackout lasting up to twelve hours.  The term “black start” capability is common in the power generation industry.  It came into prominence this suddenly dark [...]

Black Start, Chapter 8: Compressor Drives for the Industrial and Gas Pipeline Industry

Published on July 2, 2011 By dlucier

  In the 1950s, General Electric designed, constructed and installed hundreds of 2-shaft gas turbines.  The units had two, mechanically-independent turbine stages.  The high-pressure (HP) turbine powered the turbine’s own 15-stage, axial-flow compressor.  The low-pressure (LP) turbine drove another manufacturer’s load compressor (Cooper-Bessemer, Nouvo Pignone, Dresser).  These turbines were used primarily in the gas pipeline [...]

Black Start, Chapter 7: The Fuel Regulator

Published on May 15, 2011 By dlucier

The first control system used on GE gas turbines in the late 1940s was manufactured by Young & Franklin (Y&F) of Liverpool, NY.  It was called the Fuel Regulator, although fuel does not actually flow through the device.  It is a mechanical-hydraulic control (MHC) device that has an electric governor and pneumatic temperature control element.  [...]

Black Start, Chapter 6: Rutland on the Leading Edge

Published on May 13, 2011 By dlucier

Rutland, Vermont is probably not a place one would expect to be in the forefront in new technology in power generation, unless perhaps it was in mountain stream hydropower.  Even less likely is this town’s involvement with one of the first land-based gas turbines to drive an electric generator.  But that is just what happened [...]