Generator terminals · 3 units
DeliveredAVR (Basler) and governor (Woodward) characterization on each of the three LM6000 units. AVR step responses, limiter verification, PSS tuning where applicable.
Three GE LM6000 aeroderivative gas turbines feeding the Sistema Baja California Sur — a weak isolated grid stabilized by an LNG-fueled aeroderivative plant in the port of La Paz.
CT Pichilingue is a new thermal plant in the Pichilingue industrial port, just north of La Paz, Baja California Sur. The plant is owned by New Fortress Energy and is configured around three GE LM6000 aeroderivative gas turbines, each fitted with a Basler AVR and a Woodward turbine control.
Fuel is liquefied natural gas, delivered by cryogenic ship to a proprietary on-site regasification facility — a configuration that integrates fuel supply, regasification thermodynamics, and grid-following electrical generation into a single coordinated operating envelope.
Grid Code Engineering delivered the complete grid code testing program for the plant and served as the coordinator with CENACE (Mexican Grid Operator) for all of the regulatory pre-test technical requirements — a deeper coordination scope than most engagements, reflecting the complexity of bringing a new LNG-to-power facility online on an isolated grid.
Scope covered every CENACE-required test for a new connection on the Sistema Baja California Sur, executed across the three operational levels, plus the regulatory pre-test technical filings authored and shepherded through CENACE approval before any field test occurred.
AVR (Basler) and governor (Woodward) characterization on each of the three LM6000 units. AVR step responses, limiter verification, PSS tuning where applicable.
POI-level voltage and frequency regulation, primary frequency response on a weak grid, electrical-protection coordination with the Sistema Baja California Sur.
Performance, reliability, startup and shutdown characterization — coordinated with the regasification facility's thermodynamic envelope.
Every CENACE-required pre-test technical filing for a new connection on the Sistema Baja California Sur, authored and shepherded through the regulator's approval process before any field test occurred.
The Sistema Baja California Sur is one of the smallest interconnected systems in Mexico — a peninsula grid with limited generation, limited transmission redundancy, and very limited capacity to absorb the kind of intentional disturbances that grid code testing creates. Every test had to be sized to the local grid's stability margin, scheduled with the system operator's operational dispatch, and verified to leave no residual disturbance behind.
Many tests could only be run once per day; some had to be deferred to nights or to specific dispatch windows when the grid was least sensitive.
The plant's integration with the regasification facility added an interleaved dimension. Regasification regulates the LNG-to-gas thermodynamic envelope; the turbines regulate the gas-to-electricity envelope; the grid regulates the electricity-to-load envelope. A change in any of these regulators propagates to the others.
Test design had to account for the coupled control loops — which is why the AVR (Basler) and turbine control (Woodward) characterization at Level 01 mattered so much: it baselined the electrical behavior independently before the coupled-system behavior was tested at higher levels.
The plant successfully entered service on the Sistema Baja California Sur. The grid code dossier passed CENACE review.
The plant is now a stabilizing thermal anchor on a small isolated grid that has historically been short on reliable thermal capacity. NFE's broader LNG-to-power model — bringing LNG into ports that had not previously had natural gas access — has Pichilingue as a reference deployment.
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