ST Power Services Consultants, LLC.

In 2016, Siraj Taj, established ST Power Services Consultants, LLC. with a singular mission—to provide tailored solutions and expert guidance to thermal power plants navigating an increasingly complex energy landscape. With over 30 years of experience in the power industry, Taj, Founder and Principal of ST Power Services transformed it into a trusted partner renowned for its innovative, collaborative, and pragmatic approach to solving industry challenges.

Established as a consulting and contract negotiation firm, the company has evolved into a customized Operations and Maintenance (O&M) strategy provider. “We focus on maximizing total asset performance and tackling obsolescence challenges,” says Taj. This strategic shift began when changes in the energy landscape led to gas turbines cycling more frequently, revealing critical asset performance issues.

The increased turbine cyclic operation placed greater stress on the components, resulting in higher failure rates, elevated maintenance costs, and revenue losses. Simultaneously, the reduced capacity factors of these turbines had resulted in longer maintenance intervals, which decreased the frequency with which original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) produce replacement parts.

Enhancing Asset Performance through a Collaborative Approach

Extended planned maintenance cycle due to reduced capacity factors compelled plant owners and operators to reassess their plant O&M strategies to optimize asset performance, ensure profitability, and mitigate risk of failure. Meanwhile, OEM faced idle manufacturing facilities resulting in increased lead time to manufacture turbine parts, especially for ageing turbines.

Heavy cyclic operation and extended planned maintenance cycles increase the probability of component failure during operation resulting in forced outage. OEM’s increasingly longer lead time to manufacture and supply parts during forced outages results in plant unavailability, loss of revenue, higher repair costs, and reduced profits.

It became imperative for plant owners to seek innovative and pragmatic solutions that are technically and commercially viable to reduce the plant downtime during forced outages.

ST Power Services have been working with thermal plants to evaluate their existing O&M strategy that’s primarily focused on working with OEMs despite the higher maintenance costs and long lead time. The revised O&M strategy is focused on innovation, collaboration, and pragmatism. A key part of this strategy involves working with aftermarket parts and service providers and to collaborate with the global User community to share their critical spare parts with each other. In other words, the global User community helps each other during forced outages, resulting in reduced downtime and relatively low costs.

For instance, ST Power Services’ key customer had a combustor failure during operation resulting in significant damage to their gas turbine and various other components. Due to the OEM's excessively long lead time for the necessary parts to repair the gas turbine, ST Power Services helped the plant source used parts from a plant in Argentina that operates the same gas turbine technology. The used GT parts were assessed and repaired on-site, the failed gas turbine was rebuilt, and it was returned to service in significantly less time and cost.

ST Power Services works closely with subject matter experts to continuously improve innovative and pragmatic solutions to extend the service life of turbine parts, implement pragmatic O&M strategy to extend maintenance cycle, and mitigate risk of failure. That has resulted in increased plant availability, higher profitability, and reduced costs.

The success of innovative and pragmatic O&M strategies depend on a) the availability of critical spare parts, b) collaboration of the User community, and c) real-time visibility of spare parts inventory. For that, ST Power Services embarked on a strategic initiative to develop an online platform - ST Power Parts, that would allow the User community to upload and manage their spare parts inventory, which will be visible and available to the global User community. ST Power Services will manage a) technical verification to confirm parts compatibility to either use as-is or recommend required adjustments, b) parts shipping and handlings, domestic and international, and c) when necessary, installation and commissioning activity to ensure functional accuracy of the parts and to safely return the turbine to operation. This is particularly beneficial for plants that have limited resources and technical expertise to perform the tasks in-house.

ST Power Parts is identifying key participants from the global User community to test and verify the process, functionality, and usability of the platform.

Eliminating Obsolescence with Data-Driven Engineering

Another major challenge the company’s O&M strategy addresses is the obsolescence of ageing technology. It is increasingly challenging for OEMs to continue providing parts and services for an ageing fleet of turbines considering a) growing demand for new gas turbines, b) competing priorities for manufacturing slots, and c) limited experienced workforce to work on an ageing fleet. Meanwhile, owners and operators of the ageing fleet find it difficult to maintain plant reliability, availability, and profitability to meet the growing demand for reliable electricity. It is not economically viable for plant owners to upgrade the technology considering the realistic service life of the plant. ST Power Services work closely with plant O&M staff and commercial team to devise a pragmatic approach to improve the total asset performance using the advanced engineering techniques and monitoring equipment health.

By analyzing critical data from the plant—such as vibration, temperature, and pressure levels—it estimates potential failures and prepares planned maintenance programs to mitigate the risk of forced outage. This data-driven approach allows for more pragmatic decision-making, allocating maintenance budget on critical issues, and intelligently maximising the service life of ageing technology.

Operational Efficiency through Strategic Staffing

The company leverages its exceptional team of industry experts to implement these strategies and enhance operational efficiency. The team includes several independent contractors recruited on a project-by-project basis for specialized solutions. This business model allows the company to avoid the costs of maintaining a large permanent staff while sourcing correct expertise for the projects. In addition to its external team, ST Power Services has an in-house team that manages its day-to-day operations. It is led by Amir Taj, Operations Manager, who oversees business finances, sales, development, and back-office functions. The team includes Charlie Small and Mike Ward, who play critical roles in sales, marketing, and content management.

While Charlie is responsible for creating all the graphics and materials for the company’s website and social media, Mike manages the content, refining technical ideas into well-written reports. Taj relies on the support of these three executive members to maintain focus and ensure ST Power Services’ communications are professional and cohesive.

Transitioning to a Sustainable Energy Future

Looking ahead, the company will remain proactive in addressing client challenges, particularly on the generation side, while supporting efforts to improve energy efficiency on the consumption side. The key focus will be ensuring the long-term viability of existing energy assets, such as gas-fired power plants, which must be maintained to continue providing reliable power.

It is also set on integrating renewable energy sources into the existing power grid, particularly given the ageing and weakening infrastructure. Simultaneously, the reliability of thermal power plants is critical to support the grid and serve as a backup when renewable energy generation fluctuates.

ST Power Services' innovative and pragmatic approach transforms existing thermal power plants to a) maximize their value and service life, b) reliably support the growing demand for electricity, and c) be a bridge to our clean energy future. ST Power Parts will help create significant value by optimizing the use of much-needed critical spare parts stored in warehouses at power plants throughout the global power industry. By seamlessly bridging the gap between cutting-edge solutions and practical implementation, the company ensures that power generation assets are efficient and resilient in supporting growing energy demands. Trusted by plant owners and operators for maximizing asset value while effectively managing risk and operational costs, it promises continued success, driving the industry toward a more sustainable and reliable future.