GE Receives $750-Million Order From Japan Utility

GREENVILLE, S.C. — General Electric Co. has been awarded a $750-million contract to build a power plant in Japan that will become the world’s largest combined-cycle power plant, the company’s top executive announced Wednesday.

“This is the largest fossil generation order ever for GE,” GE Chairman John F. Welch Jr. told shareholders during the company’s annual stockholders meeting here.

Tokyo Electric Power Co., a privately owned utility, awarded the contract to GE. Once in operation, the combined-cycle power plant will be capable of generating 2,600 megawatts of power--600 megawatts more than the world’s largest combined-cycle plant currently in operation, Welch said.

Combined-cycle power plants use the exhaust heat from a gas turbine to generate steam, which in turn drives a steam turbine, thus generating power from energy that would have been wasted.

The power plant is scheduled to begin commercial service in the Tokyo area in the mid-1990s.

GE will serve as the prime contractor for Tokyo Electric’s new power plant, working with Japanese companies Toshiba and Hitachi on plant construction.

All eight of the proposed power plant’s gas turbines will be manufactured in GE’s Greenville plant and the eight steam turbines and hydrogen-cooled generators will be manufactured in GE’s facilities in Schenectady, N.Y.

The order from Tokyo Electric comes on the heels on a $250-million order from Duke Power Co. in March.

During the shareholders’ meeting, held amid heavy security and marked with often heated exchanges between GE executives and shareholder-activists, Welch said the company would try to become “simpler, faster” and more “self-confident” during the 1990s.

GE, which employs about 298,000 workers worldwide, reported sales of $50 billion in 1988.