DIG DEEPER: SAN ANTONIO, AUGUST 28 – SEPTEMBER 1
The eighth annual meeting of the Generator Users Group returns to in-person conferencing at the Power Users mega event in the San Antonio Marriott Rivercenter, August 29 through September 1, following virtual meetings in 2021 and 2020. From 2015 to 2019 in-person meetings were conducted in Las Vegas, San Antonio, Phoenix, Louisville, and St. Louis.
2022 conference overview
The technical program for the upcoming meeting was developed by an all-volunteer steering committee of electrical engineers and managers (sidebar)—many with decades of relevant experience. An overview of the presentations scheduled for the week beginning August 29 follows. All sessions are user only. Presenting vendors are allowed in the room only when it is their time to present.
Expectation is that most of this year’s presentations will be made available to owner/operator through the Power Users website a few months from now. Slide decks and many presentation recordings from previous meetings already are accessible to registered users in the Conference Archives. If you are not registered, sign up now at www.powerusers.org: It’s easy and there’s no charge.
Monday, August 29. The first morning features a training session on generator insulation systems, with Siemens, GE, and NEC participating. User presentations dominate the afternoon. Topics are vendor quality, stator-winding manufacturing issues, the sharing of lessons learned by one utility, a stator-winding installation case study on the importance of correct alignment of endwinding support system components, and diagnostics for outage planning. A roundtable discussion on materials, manufacturing, and installation challenges closes out the day’s classroom program. Doors to the vendor fair open at 5:30.
Tuesday, August 30. Vendor presentations dominate the program until the afternoon refreshment break. The lineup is as follows:
- HV stator-coil rewind, National Electric Coil.
- Accurate partial-discharge evaluation; new-bar pre-qualification, AES Kinectrics.
- Advances in fiberoptic core and coil monitoring, B-Phase.
- Isophase-bus anti-condensation measures, Electrical Builders Inc (EBI).
- CO2 purge, Airgas, an Air Liquide company.
- Troubleshooting plan using EMSA—a case study, Cutsforth Inc.
- HV bushings: Inspection, testing, manufacturing, and failure examples, MD&A.
- 7F generator issues, AGT Services Inc.
Three user presentations follow the afternoon break: Fixators are not as fixed as you’d expect, flex connectors, and main- and neutral-lead mod for Siemens modular units. A roundtable discussion on common failures and maintenance issues closes out the day’s activities.
Wednesday, August 31. Siemens presents in the morning, GE in the afternoon. Siemens topics include the following: Generator monitoring (case studies), FASTWedge, major findings in the fleet, enhancements for robotics inspections, optical flux probe, pole cross over (tutorial), generator purging, flexible connectors (tutorial).
GE’s presentation topics: Hydrogen leakage investigations, TIL-2260—MELCO-built core iron looseness, TIL-2337—Rotor core migration, TIL-2323—H65/H84 nozzle-assembly design update, H65/H84 seal-ring RCA, supply chain issues, collector-ring flashover prevention, air-cooled collector megger issues, generator fan design, robot development updates.
Thursday, September 1. User presentations and a roundtable discussion are featured until the meeting concludes at noon. Presentation topics include these: Bus-duct circulating-current issues, case history of a sudden field excitation increase, fleet issues seen by one utility, and shaft grounding-brush issues.
Steering committee, 2022
Dave Fischli, generator program manager, Duke Energy
Andres Olivares, generator specialist, Calpine
Jeff Phelps, principal engineer/generator SME, Southern Company
Joe Riebau, senior manager—electrical engineering and NERC, Constellation Power
Craig Spencer, director of outage services, Calpine
Jagadeesh Srirama, senior electrical engineer, NV Energy
Advisor: Jane Hutt, webmaster, International Generator Technical Community
