PRESS: Power Machines not to get 5 bln rbl from budget for turbine

MOSCOW, Nov 22 (PRIME) -- The Industry and Trade Ministry has not approved a bid of power engineering company Power Machines for 5 billion rubles of budget money to create a 17 billion ruble large-capacity gas turbine, Kommersant business daily reported on Friday quoting sources.

The company planned the efficiency factor for its GTE-170 turbine to stand at 34.1% initially with a possibility of raising it to 36% through upgrades, while the ministry required the factor of no less than 35%.

The ministry will hold a new competition until December 15. The turbine’s capacities should amount to 60–80 megawatts (MW) and 150–180 MW, Kommersant reported.

The attempt of Power Machines to promote construction of a thermal power plant with a capacity of 1.4 gigawatts (GW) for testing prototypes of Russian gas turbines also fell through. But the government now plans to approve construction of new power units with a combined capacity of 2 GW in 2026–2028 and split them into several parts for testing different sizes of turbines, the business daily said.

The main contenders for the ministry’s turbine tender are Power Machines, a joint venture of Inter RAO and General Electric, and a consortium of United Engine Corporation, state nanotechnology company Rusnano, and Inter RAO that is working on a GTD-110M large-capacity turbine.

Still, the GTD-110M turbine is unable to comply with the conditions of the ministry’s competition for subsidies. A spokesperson for Rusnano told Kommersant that the pipeline has successfully passed a 2,500-hour test, and now it is to run for 8,000 hours during the next test.

(63.8430 rubles – U.S. $1)

End