The Importance of Gas and Steam Turbine Alignment

Plant operators are continuing looking to reduce costs and shorten outage durations when they occur. Efficiency, reliability, and availability, always the watchwords of power companies, are being stressed. Plant maintenance has become more important than ever.

Conventional Methods of Turbine Alignment:

Traditional alignment methods for turbine applications involve tight wires, oil-filled cans, feeler gauges, optics and sound micrometers. All of these methods come with the additional complication of long measurement distances. Such methods are sensitive to nearby vibration and often require halting work in the area. They provide adequate though not always precise accuracy and routinely take a tremendous amount of time to perform well.

Given our ever-growing demand for power, insistence on the shortest outages under any circumstances, and more competitive power markets, an easier, faster, more accurate method of alignment was needed. It arrived in the form of laser alignment services by Integrated AVS, just as turbine efficiency is becoming ever more instrumental to profitability.