The following update on LinkedIn this afternoon from Josh Stabler at Energy Edge also caught my eye:
Josh has linked through to this article from 10th November 2020 that says ‘Toshiba stops taking orders for coal-fired power plants’.
I’d already seen on Monday 1st July that Mark Ludlow had written that ‘CS Energy commits to replacing damaged Callide power station’ in the AFR … though I did also see that Ketan Joshi followed on from the AFR article to note on 2nd June in RenewEconomy that:
“Merely uttering the possibility of reduced coal output is, literally, a sackable offence in Queensland.”
Others have also wondered at what point the decision making process might consider other replacement options:
1) I did so on 27 May as Q7 (i.e. ‘What might be done with C4?’), and
2) Carl Daley also did on 31st May (then referenced in the AFR on 31st May)
… and there are bound to be others
As the JV owners work through the repair process* it seems inevitable that they will need to navigate through potential obstacles, like that noted with Toshiba above.
* noting that we’re weeks away from the Repair Process being able to commence in earnest, whilst they are still focused on making the site safe and understanding root cause of failure (notwithstanding social media suggestions!).
The Toshiba technology is simply a GE licensed design. And there are a lot of people with that license. And specifically, this turbine is simply rated for a temperature and pressure, and the forging capability would be the same as any other thermal (like solar thermal, or a garbage burner, or . . .) turbo-generator.
Well said Jeremy. The article actually says they are stopping coal fired power plant sales, not turbine sales. Toshiba used to do boilers also. There is a huge fleet of Toshiba machines out there that will need to be supported for many years to come, so bashing out another one is no issue. And if they won’t Doosan will – another GE licensee. The big issue will be lead time. If they have wound back their order book they wont have an inventory of big forgings to make shafts out of – and they need at least one from the bit lying on the floor. I suspect there will some very sad insurance underwriters just now. There are a lot of people commenting on this that really have no idea the step by step process to sorting this out and that it is going to take quite a long time. Having been directly involved in the rehabilitation of a lesser magnitude, near death experience with a machine many years ago I can but express my sympathies to the people involved and the no doubt sleepless nights and long hours this is causing them.