Earthquakes are a very destructive force that affect many parts of the world. Rebuilding after a seismic event takes a considerable period of time, which can have a significant impact on the local community, especially if the affected assets include a number of power plants.

Unexpected outage

The Sugözü power station was commissioned in 2003 and supplies 1’308 MW, which equates to 3% of the national demand. The boilers are supplied by four Sulzer HPT feed water pumps. Since their installation, they have provided efficient and reliable service. In 2023, a magnitude 7.8 earthquake caused significant damage to buildings in southern Turkey, and the severe weather at the same time caused power outages. Consequently, the demand for power was very high and for that reason the Sugözü power station in Iskenderun was brought back online within several hours after checking critical equipment. 

Later, wind speeds at the power plant reached 90 km/h, causing damage in the switchyard, which led to a blackout. During the re-start, one of the boiler feed pumps could not be brought back into operation. As a result, one unit was offline and Sulzer was asked to fly in an engineer to carry out a comprehensive assessment of the two boiler feed pumps. Sulzer’s expert left Germany and was on site within 24 hours. As a native Turkish speaker, the engineer was able to quickly discuss the circumstances of the pump shutdowns and start the assessment.

Rapid response

The initial findings showed that one pump was more seriously damaged than the other. Apart from the damage report, the engineer also compiled a list of spare parts that would be required to repair one of the pumps quickly using spares held in stock and others delivered by Sulzer. The other pump would require more extensive repairs, or the replacement of the pump cartridge. As soon as the report was complete, the team began work sourcing the spare parts to get the pumps up and running again. At the same time, the site’s management team wanted to discuss effective strategies for minimizing any downtime in the event of a similar incident in the future. One solution would be to hold a range of spares in stock that could be installed once the damage report was completed. However, this takes time to complete, which would result in a greater amount of unplanned downtime. An alternative would be to have a spare pump cartridge in stock. Although the value of the part is higher, the exchange process is much quicker, en abling the power plant to resume normal output with minimal downtime.

Planning for the future

The option of holding a complete cartridge is often taken by operators that need to keep any downtime to an absolute minimum, in industries such as oil & gas, petrochemicals or power generation. In this case, the management decided to order two cartridges to ensure the two boiler feed pumps could be repaired quickly, minimizing their risk of having a boiler offline for an extended period. An out-of-service boiler leads to a significant drop in power output to the grid and this can incur penalty charges. Therefore, a swift turnaround for a repair offers several benefits to the operator. The combination of the adverse weather and earthquake led to several power stations being affected with significant damage to the national grid. Sulzer’s rapid response and proactive solutions for sourcing essential spare parts meant that one of the pumps could be returned to service in a short time, which enabled the boiler to restart and more power to be delivered to the local community again. Sulzer’s collaborative approach and rapid support of this customer ensured that the power plant was returned to service at the earliest opportunity. The work completed by Sulzer’s engineer was greatly appreciated by the power plant’s management team, to the point that a letter of thanks was received shortly after his return to Germany. Moving forward, the decision to stock two pump cartridges will significantly reduce any risk of extended outages in the future.
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