Snowy Hydro has carried out what it believes to be an Australian-first at its Laverton power station in Victoria, replacing an ageing gas turbine exhaust.
An exhaust, which sits at the end of the turbine, plays an important role in managing the high-temperature, high-velocity gas leaving the machine.
This formed part of a larger overhaul of a 163-megawatt (MW) gas turbine at Laverton – a two-month project that involved disassembling the turbine and generator to regenerate the machine.
“It took more than 51,000 work hours to complete, and delivered a number of firsts for Snowy,” the company said in a LinkedIn post.
Snowy Hydro’s work was made possible by a purpose-built ‘destack facility’, which supported the rebuild and disassembling of the gas turbine’s internal components.
Having first commissioned Laverton’s gas turbines in 2006, this project has reset the clock on the asset, with the machine set for another 1250 starts (equal to another 20 years).
The Laverton power station is one of Snowy Hydro’s four gas-fired power stations in Australia, amounting to 1947MW of capacity.
Valley Power in the Latrobe Valley, Victoria was commissioned in 2002 and comprises six 50MW dual-fuel open-cycle gas turbines, while Colongra in NSW was commissioned in 2009 and boasts four gas turbines for 667MW of total capacity.
Kurri Kurri is Snowy Hydro’s newest power station, which received $600 million of funding in the 2021–22 Federal Budget as part of an effort from former Prime Minister Scott Morrison’s Liberal Government to deliver 1000MW of new dispatchable energy before the closure of the Liddell power station in 2023.
Kurri Kurri entered commissioned in 2025 before operations commenced later in the year.
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