T-POINT 2 AND TOMONI™ TECHNOLOGYA WINNING
COMBINATIONFOR CUSTOMERST-POINT 2 AND TOMONI™ TECHNOLOGY:
A WINNING COMBINATION FOR CUSTOMERSPower companies are always striving to increase efficiency, improve reliability, reduce emissions,and decrease costs associated with operating power plants. Mitsubishi Power is doing
significant work to help its customers achieve those objectives. Among the innovative, industryleading approaches Mitsubishi Power has taken in developing advanced technology is utilizing
demonstration plants built at its own facilities to validate the company’s gas turbines and TOMONI™
digital solutions under real operating conditions. These units have been connected to the power
grid, and the electricity generated by them has been used by the local power companies.

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A HISTORY OF ACCOMPLISHMENTS
The first such demonstration plant was a 50-Hz unit known as K-Point. It entered service in 1992
at Mitsubishi Heavy Industries’ facility in Kanazawa, Yokohama, Japan. The value was immediately
recognized, leading the company to open a 60-Hz demonstration plant, called T-Point, at its Takasago
Machinery Works facility in 1997.
“Prior to opening T-Point, Mitsubishi Power launched full-load
shop testing (limited only to 100 hours of operation) of the
60-Hz M501F, as well as partial-load operation (but also withlimited time) of the 50-Hz M701F at K-Point in Yokohama,” said
Junichiro Masada, Senior Vice President, co-Chief Technology
Officer, and Deputy Head — Turbomachinery Headquarters
with Mitsubishi Power. “These short testing times were not
optimal and we experienced multiple fleet issues with theF-class.”

Recognizing that short-term testing does not reveal alltechnology issues, Mitsubishi Power decided to launch longterm verification of the 60-Hz M501G at T-Point. Once the 60Hz machine was verified, the company did a mechanical runon the 50-Hz M701G, which is a scaled version of the 60-Hz
machine, achieving 100% reliability.
“Afterwards, we started verifying the J-class machines
through a similar process at T-Point. We were able todemonstrate sound reliability for both M501J and M701J,” said
Masada.

Grid-connected validation plant, T-Point. Hyogo Prefecture, Japan

Now, after more than two decades of successful validation oftechnological advancements at T-Point, Mitsubishi Power has
commissioned T-Point 2 — its largest and most ambitious
demonstration plant yet. Today, the company is validating its
latest advanced gas turbine, the M501JAC. Initial verification
for the M501JAC was successfully completed and long-term
verification is ongoing at T-Point 2.
Constructed on a site next to the original T-Point at Mitsubishi
Power Takasago Works in Hyogo Prefecture, Japan, T-Point 2
has already received accolades from the reputable industry
journal POWER magazine, winning the publication’s Plant of

the Year Award in 2020. “Our editorial staff felt the facility
stood out for multiple reasons and deserved recognition,”
said Aaron Larson, Executive Editor of POWER. “For one, it
is operating what Mitsubishi Power calls the ‘most efficient
heavy-duty gas turbine in the market.’ Additionally, its
integration of TOMONI technology — a suite of digital power
plant solutions with cutting-edge analytics — has prepared
T-Point 2 to become the world’s first autonomous combined
cycle power plant,” he said.

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1

TECHNOLOGY IS AT THE HEART OF T-POINT 2

TOMONI™ digital solutions is a customizable suite of user-driven, digital power plant solutions
developed based on Mitsubishi Power’s vast experience. It turns operational data into actionableinsights to improve plant availability and reduce original equipment manufacturer (OEM) costs.
At T-Point 2, the journey to become the world’s first autonomous combined cycle power plant includes
the validation and demonstration of many of the building blocks of that autonomous power plant.
These building blocks will be at the heart of future power plants and many are retrofittable to existing
plants to improve their dispatchability.
“As we move into a digital era, it is important to leverage emerging
technologies as much as possible to optimize operations while
maximizing economic benefit,” Masada said. “Mitsubishi Power
has been implementing digital solutions in T-Point 1 since theearly 2000s, starting with the remote monitoring system andother advanced data visualization and analytics. Since then, our
TOMONI™ digital solutions and the latest DIASYS Netmation®
control systems have advanced to the point where we can operate
remotely with some functions automated. In fact, many of thefunctions at T-Point 2 are already automated.”
One example of a building block that supports autonomous
operation at T-Point 2 is the unit’s AI-CPFM (artificial intelligencecombustion pressure fluctuation monitoring) system, which
minimizes combustion fluctuations by making quick adjustments

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to combustor settings when changes in ambient
temperature, fuel composition, or frequency occur. Anotheris the Gas Turbine Cooling Air AI-Optimization solution that
actively controls disc cavity cooling air flow.
Other TOMONI™ digital solutions building blocks can
optimize maintenance plans through component life
projections. Life consumption and possible component
failures can be predicted in advance. These analytics create
automated notifications to alert operators — whether on-siteor remote — of anomalies and pending failures, and provide
proper instructions to prevent forced outages.

IMPROVING
THE CONSTRUCTION PROCESSThe Japanese are well recognized around the world for theirvery high construction standards. In the case of T-Point 2,
construction of the facility coincided with significant work
being done in Japan in preparation for the Tokyo Olympic
games. Nonetheless, Mitsubishi Power used its skills as anengineering, procurement, and construction (EPC) contractor
to assemble a high-quality workforce for T-Point 2, and the
project logged about 20,000 man-days per month during thepeak of construction.
“We conducted intensive training to maintain safety andhealth of the workers and improve quality of work. Someof the key induction trainings include construction safety,
road safety, disaster prevention, and health and safety
training. The training was provided to improve the skillsof the workers before they started working on the project,
and the results have been very positive,” said Junichiro
Masada, Senior Vice President, co-Chief Technology Officer,
and Deputy Head — Turbomachinery Headquarters with
Mitsubishi Power.
The training and sound oversight paid dividends. The losttime incident rate for the project was an amazing 0.00, andthe total recordable incident rate was a very respectable
0.26. “We are proud to have achieved such great safety
results even as we worked under tight timelines,”
said Masada.

Collaboration is the foundation of TOMONITM digital solutions.

TOMONI™, which means “together with” in Japanese,
expresses the philosophy that intelligent digital solutions
that utilize AI and other advanced analytics work throughcollaboration between OEMs and plant owners andoperators. “Each of the TOMONI™ digital solutions building
blocks is meant to integrate with the customer’s existing
systems and processes at their plants. This means that ourcontrol system—Netmation®— and our TOMONI™ Intelligent
Solutions co-exist with other digital platforms at thecustomer’s facility,” explained Marco Sanchez, Vice Presidentof Intelligent Solutions with Mitsubishi Power.
“What sets it apart is that we are pioneering the applicationof AI, machine learning, and advanced technologies, suchas augmented reality and simulation in power generation,and collaborating with engineering, procurement, andconstruction contractors, operations and maintenanceproviders, and industry partners to develop smart systems
to address issues that are impacting availability, flexibility,and performance at plants,” Sanchez said.

T-Point 2 during construction, October 2019.
In addition to training, Mitsubishi Power also provided
several countermeasures to maintain safety and improve
productivity. For example, during the hot summer season,“air-conditioned suits” were utilized by workers to staycool and prevent heatstroke. Other advanced technologies
that contributed to a safer and more productive working
environment included mixed reality technology and a
block insulation system, which brings new technology toovercome the limitations of traditional approaches to casing
and piping insulation.
Mixed reality was used during the construction phase tosimulate assembly procedures using virtual reality. The
process included superposition of the actual plant over the
3D model. Using the tool, the team was able to simulate thecarry-in and carry-out of large equipment, and assemble
the main unit virtually. The technology enabled workers tosignificantly improve productivity and quality control.
The proprietary block insulation system was a new method
to install insulation in the gas turbine casing, whichremarkably improved productivity. With this technique,the team was able to complete the same work with only 20%of the man-hours that had been previously required.

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are registered trademarks and TOMONI is a trademark of Mitsubishi Power, Ltd.

“The mixed reality and block insulation system solutions
were very effective,” Masada remarked. “We anticipate using
these technologies in future projects.”
Mitsubishi Power3

AN EVER-EVOLVING PLATFORM

TOMONI™ digital solutions has its roots extending well back in time to the transition from analog
to digital control systems in the 1970s. Mitsubishi Power developed several iterations of new
information and communications technology (ICT) from the 1980s to today. In 1999, Mitsubishi Power
opened its first remote monitoring center (RMC) in Takasago to monitor thermal power facilities
in Japan and overseas. Two years later, it opened an RMC in Orlando, Florida, focused mainly on
North American gas turbine combined cycle plants. Since then, RMCs have been added in Alabang(Muntinlupa, Philippines) and in Nagasaki on the island of Kyushu in Japan.
TOMONI™ digital solutions has evolved from its early
applications that were focused on gas turbine monitoringand operational flexibility to today’s advanced total plant
solutions that form the basis of the Mitsubishi Powerstrategy to steadily create the building blocks of the smart,autonomous power plant of the future. A good exampleof this evolution is the advanced analytics being applied
at T-Point 2 to enable true data-driven condition-based
maintenance (CBM). Too often in the past, CBM was simply areasoned judgment of a subject matter expert based on risk
tolerance because the data was not available to accurately
calculate component remaining lifetime. Today’s monitoringand diagnostics capabilities make true CBM possible.
A Gas Turbine Combined Cycle (GTCC) Performance Diagnosis
tool is also being validated and trained currently at T-Point 2.
It is a thermal cycle model-based diagnostic package that

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Mitsubishi Power

compares actual GTCC thermal cycle performance with
as-designed and as-last-maintained conditions to identify
deviations and automatically deliver engineering insights tosuggest troubleshooting and corrective actions to maximize
cycle efficiency.
“Our near-term product roadmap has additional new
product deployments scheduled after the successfulcommissioning of T-Point 2,” said Sanchez, adding that evenmore features are planned once T-Point 2 reaches 8,000
actual operating hours (AOH). “With the rapid advancements
in digital technologies in all aspects of our lives and society,the journey to the smart, autonomous power plant of the
future will be a continuous one, as new capabilities andtechnologies emerge regularly, and are steadily evaluatedand validated,” he said.

Copyright ©2021 Mitsubishi Power Americas, Inc. DIASYS, Netmation, and DIASYS Netmation are registered trademarks and
TOMONI is a trademark of Mitsubishi Power, Ltd.

T-POINT 2 DELIVERS INSURABILITY BENEFITS
But T-Point 2 was built for more than just showcasing Mitsubishi Power’s technology and capabilities,
it also serves as a living laboratory, testing and validating the latest and greatest improvements
being developed by engineers and scientists at the company. No other OEM in the power industry
is validating gas turbines the way Mitsubishi Power does, and it shows.
Donald Schubert, Principal of SHL Consulting and retired
Senior Vice President for Marsh, a global insurance
brokering and risk management advisory firm, said,“Without question, Mitsubishi Power’s validation and its
testing philosophy are far and away better than the rest of
the OEMs’ because they address the long-term distress,
corrosion, erosion and other long-term related issues.”“If you look at the history of testing and validation, until
the 1970s, no OEM was testing or validating industrial gas
turbines. The first client was the guinea pig,” said Carlos
Koeneke, Chief Technology Officer—New Generation Systems
with Mitsubishi Power Americas. “This was terrible for the
first site, and the insurance companies ended up paying
fortunes for design issues, not to mention that the firstproject was commonly delayed.”In the 1980s, all the OEMs started doing shop tests withwater brakes or other energy dissipation devices. This
improved outcomes, but the extremely high cost of fuelinvolved in running large frame gas turbines at high loads
made it economically prohibitive to sustain tests longer
than 100 hours. It was also a waste of energy and required
significant resources to move large frame gas turbines
weighing several hundreds of tons into test facilities

and to connect all the sensors, piping, manifolds, and more— all for a 100-hour test.
Furthermore, the vast majority of failures in rotating
equipment, especially under high-temperature oscillations,involve mechanisms that cannot be detected immediately,
but rather take time, or a large number of starts and stops,
or both. For example, low-cycle fatigue, creep, erosion, andcorrosion failures generally do not occur until units haveoperated for thousands of hours.
While most OEMs are unwilling to invest several hundredsof millions of dollars to build a power station to validate theirgas turbines, Mitsubishi Power sees the value. It believeshaving a reputation for high reliability and high durability
is worth the cost. Schubert agrees. He said history shows
Mitsubishi Power’s validation process works. The company’s
gas turbines have had fewer and less-costly insurance
claims on a per turbine basis than all other OEMs.
“If you were to spend time with insurance companies, you’ll
find that without question every one of them would argue theMitsubishi Power approach to testing and validation is prettymuch the cream of the crop,” he said.

Transporting the M501JAC to T-Point 2.
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Mitsubishi Power

5

RELIABLE STEAM-COOLED GAS TURBINES
Some power industry observers have developed an unfavorable view of steam cooling applied
to gas turbines, but not all steam-cooled designs have low reliability. Mitsubishi Power masteredsteam-cooling technology by testing and validating equipment at its K-Point and T-Point facilities.
The company began studying steam cooling in the mid-1990s at K-Point, where steam-cooled
components were retrofitted for evaluation downstream of the unit’s combustor basket. This led
to the validation of the first commercial application of steam cooling at T-Point in 1997.
“The reliability of Mitsubishi Power’s steam-cooled fleet issimply outstanding,” Koeneke said. “The high reliability is,among others, the result of improvements of the original
design, and more important, the subsequent validationof the modified unit.” Koeneke’s claim is backed up by athird-party evaluation. Strategic Power Systems Inc. (SPS)
conducted thorough analysis of multiple steam-cooled units,
substantiating the claim.

International (PGI) in 2013, one of the conclusions was that
Mitsubishi Power’s G-Series “has grown to be the largest andmost reliable steam-cooled gas turbine fleet in the market.”More recent analysis confirms the finding.
In the PGI presentation, SPS also noted that the M501G’s
reliability of 98.73% achieved over the five-year period
analyzed was better than the air-cooled F-class peer groupvalue of 97.77% over the same timeframe. Furthermore,
only 18% of downtime for the Mitsubishi Power units was
unplanned, compared to 35% of downtime being unplanned
for the F-class peer group, suggesting Mitsubishi Power
M501G units had a higher probability of achieving planned
fiscal performance.

SPS began collecting data on M501G units in 2009. The
company’s Operational Reliability Analysis Program collects
operational, capacity, age, and outage data from a varietyof operating plants with the intention of monitoring andmeasuring the availability and reliability performance. Ina paper co-authored by SPS and presented at POWERGEN

PeriodO c t 2 0 15 - S ep 2 0 20

Category“ F ” C l as sAdvanced
Technology

M501J***

Number of Units

717

36

12

Reliability*

97.43%

98.08%

99.58%

Availability*

90.16%

90.14%

92.63%

Forced Outage Factor**

0.97%

1.06%

0.20%

Unscheduled MaintenanceOutage Factor**

0.73%

0.70%

0.79%

MTBF** (hours)

2,853

3,386

9,581

MTTR** (hours)

25.41

26.90

9.24

Frame

GT24/26, 6F/FA, 7F/FA, 9F/FA,
7FB/9FBW501F, V84.3, V64.3A,
V84.3A, V94.3A
M501F/M701F

7H/9H
W501G
M501G/M701G

M501J* - Values based on “Simple Cycle Plant” = GT + Gen. + Controls + Direct Ancillaries + Station Equip.
** - Values based on “Gas Turbine only”*** - The M501J Units started reporting in August 2018
Source: ORAP®; All rights reserved: SPS®

This trend has continued over
the years, and the gap has
widened. The latest SPS reportshows the reliability of theM501G increased to 99.12%,
while the F-class groupdeclined to 97.43%.
“Based on the analysis, it islogical to conclude that thepoor reputation often attributed
to steam-cooled gas turbines
stems mainly from the meager
performance of non-Mitsubishi
Power steam-cooled designs.
We have the largest and mostreliable steam-cooled fleet,
and that is another testament
to the effectiveness of T-Point,”
Koeneke said.

January 2021

SPS gas turbine reliability analysis report, January 2021

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CONTINUOUS
IMPROVEMENTS AREPART OF THE PROCESS
T-Point 2 was constructed using a single-shaft
configuration. In such an arrangement, the gas
turbine and steam turbine are on one shaft,connected by a synchronous self-shifting (SSS)
clutch. The two turbines drive a single, common
generator, whereas, in multi-shaft designs thegas turbine and steam turbine are on different
shafts, each driving an independent generator.

FUTURE-PROOFINGWITH HYDROGEN CAPABILITY

Many experts have pointed to hydrogen as a potential
gamechanger for the power industry. The concept revolves
around utilizing electricity generated by renewables when
supply is high and demand is low. This could be around midday when solar power production is peaking but the needfor power is relatively light. Rather than curtailing output,
the excess power could be used to produce hydrogenthrough electrolysis, with the hydrogen stored for later use.
Then, when demand increases and renewable supplies
decrease around sunset, the hydrogen could be used to fuela gas turbine, thus supplying renewable energy.
Mitsubishi Power has been leading the industry forwardwith its hydrogen projects. The company announced in May
2019 that it was partnering with Magnum Development,
the owner of a large and geographically rare undergroundsalt dome in Utah, on a project that could store renewablehydrogen year-round in caverns within the salt dome andprovide it to power markets in the western United States
when they need it.
To use hydrogen to its fullest extent, gas turbines must beable to operate with 100% hydrogen. That is why Mitsubishi
Power is also working on a Carbon-Free Gas Power projectin the Netherlands. The project will convert one of threeunits at the 1.32-GW Magnum combined cycle power plant
to run on 100% hydrogen by 2025.

M501JAC rotor installation.

“Because of the single-shaft configuration, the generator
at T-Point 2 is sized for gas turbine + steam turbine output.
This will allow us to test larger gas turbines in the future
because we can either reduce the steam turbine output
or decouple it (through the SSS clutch) and run larger gas
turbines at full load,” explained Koeneke.
Another important improvement is associated with theuse of state-of-the-art sensors and electronics. Since theoriginal T-Point unit was 22 years old, it did not have all of
the advanced technology that is incorporated into T-Point 2.
The new plant will help facilitate further development ofcontrol systems and TOMONI™ digital solutions technology.
The latest version of the Netmation® control system –DIASYS Netmation 4S® control system – is already being
validated for large advanced class GTCC applications.

But it is not as easy as it sounds. A gas turbine has threemain sections: compressor, combustor, and turbine. The
compressor and turbine sections require no significant
changes to run on 100% hydrogen. What needs changes
is the combustion section — where the fuel drives the gas
turbine process.
“We need a different combustion technology to utilizehydrogen in a dry low-NOx kind of way,” Paul Browning,
CEO of Mitsubishi Power Americas, explained. “We are in theprocess of developing that now. Our existing technology canutilize natural gas with 30% hydrogen. The new technology
is going to be able to run with 100% hydrogen.”The development could be vitally important for customers
as the power landscape evolves in the future. By having
the capability of 100% hydrogen fueling, gas turbines are
essentially future-proofed, making them assets that canbe relied upon in the long term, even as — and because —more renewable resources are being added to the grid.

continued on next page
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CONTINUOUS IMPROVEMENTS - continued“DIASYS Netmation 4S® control system uses the latest
controls hardware and software technology to increasesystem reliability and usability,” Sanchez said. “Another key
feature of this new version is that it comes with Netmation
Secure Gateway, which has already been proven in
deployments to existing, earlier Netmation® control systeminstallations. It prevents unauthorized access to the control
system from outside and offers a one-way data diode tochannel the massive amount of on-site data for centralized
analytics and remote subject matter expert evaluation.”
The J-Series steam-cooled gas turbines were thoroughly
validated at the original T-Point plant, followed by validationof the air-cooled version, the M501JAC. Now T-Point 2
features the M501JAC with an enhanced air-cooling conceptthat allows increasing the turbine inlet temperature (TIT)
from 1,600C to 1,650C without changing hot gas pathmaterials. The M501JAC also allows clearances to be
adjusted during operation, thereby achieving record-setting
efficiency under load by minimizing clearances.

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are registered trademarks and TOMONI is a trademark of Mitsubishi Power, Ltd.

amer.power.mhi.com
407-688-6100“We are also applying a slightly thicker thermal barrier
coating to deal with the higher TIT,” said Koeneke, noting that
this technology had been validated for several years in theprevious plant as well.
Mitsubishi Power’s technology is sound and well proven,
not only at the K-Point, T-Point, and now, T-Point 2 validation
facilities, but also in customers’ power plants all around theworld. The company is constantly striving to push efficiency
to new heights, which is good for the environment and evenbetter for generators’ bottom lines. Mitsubishi Power isleading the gas turbine industry forward with technology
designed to increase TIT, provide autonomous plant
operation, and utilize new fuels that provide carbon-freeenergy. Technology advancements and the company’s provendemonstration methods provide a winning combination forcustomers.