ST Power Services has long championed a strategy of transforming existing thermal plants to be the bridge to our clean energy future. Building resilience within these plants is vital for generating clean, reliable, and sustainable electricity to meet the growing demand — now and throughout this critical transition.
In fact, this is an approach we’ve espoused for 8-plus years, whether we’re connecting with peers at industry events or sharing thought leadership pieces on our blog and LinkedIn.
Globally, our existing thermal plants face significant challenges, including:
- Evolving operating models
- Low-capacity factors and high cycling
- Aging workforce and technology
- Rising O&M costs
- Expensive long-term service agreements
- Limited options for parts and services — especially during unplanned outages.
It’s a long and daunting list, but we’ve endeavored to make these challenges more approachable. ST Power Services has developed an innovative, pragmatic, and proven framework for enabling thermal plant owners and operators to overcome these challenges while maximizing plant availability, reliability, and profitability.
Through our conversations over the years, it’s become apparent that many of you also believe that the approach we’ve outlined is the most prudent path forward. But we’ve rarely seen significant validation from the industry — until now.
As we pored over POWER magazine’s February article, “The Evolving State of Plant O&M” written by Sonal Patel, our initial reaction was:
- This is a wonderfully researched and well-written piece of long-form journalism.
- Yes, Yes & YES!
We immediately knew that we had company on that path toward our clean energy future, and what great company it is, indeed. It’s this passage from the article, in particular, that resonated with us:
“In another important trend, given modern complexities and evolving risks in the power sector, many utilities and power companies are increasingly turning to value-driven partnerships, often through third-party O&M service contracts. These partnerships encompass project management, robust training programs, detailed plant assessments, and the adoption of tailored best practices to optimize operations. Many are designed to leverage economies of scale and advanced remote operations, providing utilities with cost efficiencies and enhanced reliability in managing diverse energy assets.”
We truly believe that this prioritization, with an innovative and pragmatic approach to O&M, is more than a passing trend — it’s now a proven model that we need to deploy at a much greater scale. To see the possibilities that adopting it can create, we only need to look back at the work we did with InterGen’s Rocksavage Power Station, located just southeast of Liverpool in England. When the combined cycle natural gas–fired power plant lost its Alstom GT26 turbine, we were able to help do something that had never been done before: repair a gas turbine using original second-hand parts. The upshot of this outside-the-box approach included improved quality, lower costs, and cutting estimated plant downtime in half. It also taught us, and the industry several important lessons.
Perhaps most critically, our successful collaboration at Rocksavage inspired us to think about how to evolve this successful undertaking into an industrywide resource that could change the way we think about O&M, and in particular, troubleshooting unplanned outages. This led us to our new strategic initiative: ST Power Parts. As a finished work product, it would enable the plant Owners and Operators to work closely with each other, solving critical parts issues during unplanned outages to avoid the adverse effects of costly OEM-supplied parts with long lead-time delivery.
As we work diligently to transform this from a concept to a working digital marketplace for thermal plant parts, we have outlined the benefits of following this new innovative and pragmatic path vs. the traditional OEM path:
Click here to view InfoGraphic details.
While the idea of transforming our existing thermal plants to be the bridge to our clean energy future — a shift driven in large part by evolving our approach to O&M — has been proven out, the path before us is rife with challenges. But seeing increased buy-in and validation of this approach from key industry players goes a long way in thwarting these obstacles.
We’re prepared, now more than ever, to confront these challenges head on — will you join us?
Curious about what ST Power Services can do for your power plant? Connect with us and let’s talk.
