An aeroderivative is the shortest route to firm capacity for most buyers: it starts fast, tolerates cycling, and it exists today rather than in an order book. What it does not come with is a settled value. Two LM6000s with the same nameplate can differ by the cost of a major overhaul, and the difference is not visible in a photograph of the package.
The order below is the order we work in, because each step decides whether the next one is worth paying for.
Start with title, not with the machine
Before anything technical, establish who owns the asset and whether anything is attached to it. That means a named owner or custodian, a document that evidences the claim, and a lien search in the jurisdiction where the equipment sits. An intermediary who cannot arrange direct owner contact under NDA is not a route to the asset; it is a route to a broker chain.
This is unglamorous and it is where most of the wasted diligence spend in this market originates. An inspection booked on an asset whose seller cannot convey it is money spent proving something you could have established with a phone call and a search.
Reconcile the hours, then reconcile them again
Equivalent operating hours, fired starts, and time since the last major are the three figures that set the maintenance position, and they should agree across at least three sources: the control system counters, the OEM or shop records, and the operator's own logs. When they disagree, the disagreement is the finding.
What to press on:
- Equivalent operating hours rather than clock hours, since starts and trips are weighted differently by every OEM
- The date and scope of the last hot section inspection, with the report rather than a summary of it
- Whether the recorded intervals were run against the OEM schedule or against a negotiated variation
- Any period of operation on a fuel other than the one the buyer intends to run
- The preservation record for every month the machine has been down
A gap in the record is not automatically a defect. It is a fact about the machine that has to be priced, and the price of an unrecorded year is usually the cost of assuming the worst about it.
The hot section decides the economics
Compressor fouling and blade tip condition are recoverable. A hot section at the end of its interval is a capital event, and on some platforms it approaches the value of the package. This is why a borescope, performed by a specialist, is the single highest-value piece of diligence available on a used turbine and why it should happen before a purchase price is agreed rather than after.
Ask what the borescope covered, who performed it, and whether the imagery is available in full. A report that states a conclusion without the frames behind it is an opinion, not evidence.
The most expensive assumption in this market is that a machine that ran well is a machine that will run well.
The control platform is a schedule risk, not a detail
Control systems age out faster than the mechanical package around them. An obsolete platform means a controls upgrade, and a controls upgrade means engineering, drawings, factory acceptance testing and a commissioning window — the same long-lead exposure the buyer bought a used machine to avoid. Establish the platform, its support position, and whether spares are still obtainable before the machine is priced as ready to run.
Balance of plant is where the schedule actually goes
The turbine is rarely what delays a project. Step-up transformers, medium-voltage switchgear, gas conditioning and the civil works are, and they run on their own lead times regardless of how quickly the machine arrives. Any schedule quoted for a used asset that does not name the balance-of-plant path is quoting the easy half of the problem. We treat it as a parallel procurement track from day one, which is set out in how we scope integration.
What "zero-hour" has to mean before it means anything
Two sellers can use that phrase to describe a wash and a full teardown. It carries no information until someone writes down what is disassembled, what is inspected, what is replaced, what is repaired, what is tested, and to whose standard. Insist on the line-by-line specification before signature, and on the test reports after. What that specification should contain is set out in repower and refurbishment.
The short version
If you can only do three things: confirm title before you spend money, get a borescope by a named specialist, and get the balance-of-plant schedule in writing alongside the machine's. Everything else is refinement of the price. Those three decide whether there is a transaction at all.
Every asset we bring forward is measured against the Exchange Standard, and the tier on the record states exactly which of this work has been done and by whom.
- Aeroderivative
- Diligence
- Hot section
- Records