Ten Years of Digital Computer Control of Combustion Turbines

This paper establishes the design criteria for the digital computer control systems first produced in 1969, and currently in the tenth year of history for startup, control, and monitoring of combustion turbine units in the 25–125 MW range, reviews the advantages of digital control and the fall-out obtained from the application of an advanced state-of-the-art control in the area of diagnostics and historic data handling, reviews the integration of the digital computer back-up system, composed of a solid-state fuel scheduler and logic sequencer provided for total system performance and reliability, and discusses the feasibility of a computer retrofit using existing software with the latest state-of-the-art microprocessor emulator.