Skip to main content
Society
Main Category
Sub Category
Era
Date Created
Location Country
us
Coordinates
42.809806, -73.953527
Address1
Plant of General Electric Co
Address2
Old River Rd
City
Schenectady
State
Country
Zip
This unit, retired from the Belle Isle Station of the Oklahoma Gas & Electric Company, was the first gas turbine to be used for electric utility power generation in the United States. It represents the transformation of the early aircraft gas turbine, in which the engines seldom ran more than ten hours at a stretch, into a long-life prime mover. This redesign was based upon creep-rupture tests of S-816 cobalt-base alloys for turbine buckets. The low-cost trouble-free service led to wide-scale adoption of the gas turbine, over 45 million kilowatt capacity (over 9 percent of U.S. output) being installed during the period 1966 to 1976. This two-stage expansion turbine has a fifteen-stage axial compressor. It ran on natural gas. Through a reduction gear, it drove a 3,500 kilowatt alternator at 3,600 revolutions per minute.
Image Credit
Image Courtesy of ASME
Image Caption
Belle Isle Gas Turbine on static display in Schenectady, New York

We hope you enjoyed this essay.

Please support America's only magazine of the history of engineering and innovation, and the volunteers that sustain it with a donation to Invention & Technology.

Donate

Stay informed - subscribe to our newsletter.
The subscriber's email address.