80 Years Open GT Development in Baden

Abstract

Abstract On 07.07.1939 the Neuchatel gas turbine passed its performance test under the supervision of Aurel Stodola [1]. This was the world’s first open gas turbine for electric power generation in commercial operation. It launched the past eighty year period of further development and corresponding market growth. The Baden area played an important role. The aim of this paper is to complete the already published comprehensive historical information with two additional aspects especially regarding the second 40 years, in which the author was an involved contemporary witness: The first is how the predominance of something like a local spirit integrated both a considerable share of foreign engineering staff and also the changes of the ownership of the technology from Brown Boveri to ABB and then to Alstom and recently to GE and Ansaldo. The second aspect is the inside view of the author, who has both shaped and suffered these gas turbine developments in several job positions allowing direct contact to both top management and shop floor workers. These two aspects will be integrated in the historical sequence. As a rule the roles of the persons acting after the seventies are given but not their names. The history of the involved companies has caught much attention of media and writers. After the formation of ABB it was used for both celebrating outstanding management performance and despicable management mistake. I will add as an engineer my insider view to this and mention the corresponding book references. This paper is limited to the mainstream open GT development for space reasons and therefore omits other interesting side developments of BBC such as closed Helium cycles, IGCC applications and compressed air energy storage as well as the other products of BBC, which all played a role in equalizing the business cycles.