Rolls-Royce awarded Trent 60 contract

Rolls-Royce has announced its first orders from electric utilities in the United States and Belgium for its Trent 60 gas turbine.

Braintree Electric Light Department in Massachusetts has signed a contract for two Rolls-Royce Trent 60 power generation packages. These will be Wet Low Emissions (WLE) units, capable of providing up to 116MW of electrical power at the Thomas A. Watson generating station, a new power plant to be constructed on the site of the retired Potter 1 station, located south of Boston.

The Belgian electricity utility, SPE, has selected two Trent 60 units to power generating packages to be constructed by the Swiss power systems packager, Turbomach.

SPE will use its Trent 60 Dry Low Emissions (DLE) engines at its Ham power station, near Gent, to provide electrical power to the national grid at times of peak demand.

At site conditions each gas turbine has a power rating of 51MW but this will increase by over 11 per cent when both engines are upgraded at a later date with a new Rolls-Royce engineering development, Inlet Spray Intercooling (ISI).  According to Rolls-Royce, the boost in performance will benefit SPE by allowing it to increase the power produced from the units in hot weather with a nominal increase in cost.