Solar Turbines Inc
2200 Pacific Hwy, San Diego, California, United States

Solar Turbines Incorporated, headquartered in San Diego, California, is a wholly owned subsidiary of Caterpillar Inc. Solar manufactures the world’s most widely used family of mid-sized industrial gas turbines, ranging from 1 to 23 megawatts. More than 16,000 Solar units are operating in more than 100 countries with more than 3 billion operating hours. Solar is a leading provider of energy solutions, featuring an extensive line of gas turbine-powered compressor sets, mechanical drive packages, and generator sets.  Solar’s customers put the company’s products to work in many areas, including production, processing and pipeline transmission of natural gas and crude oil, and generation of electricity and thermal energy for processing applications, such as manufacturing chemicals, pharmaceuticals, and food products.  Solar’s foundation is people and Solar’s culture is one where individual contributions are valued, diversity in the workplace is encouraged, and safety is emphasized in all aspects of the business. Solar Turbines is comprised of a dedicated and multi-talented workforce of more than 8,000 employees with decades of experience working as a global team.

Solar Turbines History

Solar Turbines started as an aircraft company in 1927. The company grew through several wars and the Great Depression. Solar’s growth led the company to develop a wide range of innovative products. Today Solar is a key player in the 1,000 to 30,000 horsepower (hp) segment of the global gas turbine market, making it a world-class energy solutions provider. Building on the accomplishments below, Solar Turbines continues to power the future as ONE team.

Our team offers several options for our customers to finance their equipment. Here are a few choices for your Solar projects:

• Non-recourse financing
• Term and construction financing
• Financing based on total project cost
• Flexible payment terms during construction

OUR MISSION

• We are relentless in meeting our commitments. We act with urgency to deliver innovative and high quality turbomachinery, energy and lifecycle solutions.
• We ensure long-term success by investing in future technologies and maintaining a competitive, flexible cost structure while achieving strong returns on investments.
• We act with integrity to deliver sustainable value to our people, customers and local communities throughout the world.

Solar Turbines and Caterpillar are committed to operating a sustainable business and contributing to a better world through:

• Reducing emissions for our products
• Giving new life to existing products
• Developing new technologies and processes
• Transforming our safety performance
• Operating environmentally-friendly facilities through reduction in greenhouse gases and hazardous waste, recycling, and conscientious water and electrical usage
• Responding when disaster strikes, and building better communities and a cleaner environment.

Power And Compression In The Oil And Gas Industry     

 Solar has what it takes to serve the Oil and Gas industry. Solar's Construction Services offers a comprehensive range of equipment and services to help meet your total power system requirements. Construction Services will manage your entire project scope. This drastically simplifies design, development and construction while minimizing the chance of errors. Our professional staff knows your application fully – from gas compression to power generation. Solar provides a full range of services.

Compression For The Oil And Gas Production Industry     

 Solar’s compressors help drive customer success.  In both onshore and offshore locations, Solar provides natural gas centrifugal compressors that deliver best-in-class performance. Each compressor is precisely matched with a Solar gas turbine or electric motor drive for the optimal system performance.  Solar currently offers compressor model lines with design innovations specifically engineered for upstream process applications. These compressors have alternate casing configurations and suction, discharge and drive-through capability. Some models include dual-compartment compressors with four nozzles per casing, allowing for intercooling and side streams.  Solar’s gas compressors are designed and built in San Diego, California, alongside our gas turbine drivers. We have invested in a world-class, closed loop and string testing facility that meets our customers’ most stringent test requirements.  Solar can provide expanded scope solutions, which include balance of plant equipment, plant/station controls, as well as complete modular and single lift solutions. 

Gas Turbine Overview 

 A gas turbine engine is a type of internal combustion engine. Essentially, the engine can be viewed as an energy conversion device that converts energy stored in the fuel to useful mechanical energy in the form of rotational power. The term “gas” refers to the ambient air that is taken into the engine and used as the working medium in the energy conversion process.  This air is first drawn into the engine where it is compressed, mixed with fuel and ignited. The resulting hot gas expands at a high velocity through a series of airfoil-shaped blades transferring energy created from combustion to turn an output shaft. The residual thermal energy in the hot exhaust gas can be harnessed for a variety of industrial processes.

Cogeneration With Energy Recovery For Refineries

Solar Turbines’ modular, industrial gas turbines can integrate combined heat and power (CHP) allowing significant energy efficiency improvement. Refineries and petrochemical plants have the need to become integrated, energy efficient and sustainable.  One benefit of the gas turbine solution is that streams can be used independently or blended together when the refinery production varies, and various gas producers/consumers come online or offline. This capability enables customers to reduce flaring and improve thermal efficiency while maximizing value in low emissions power and heat (CHP or CCGT configurations) compared to other solutions.  Our capabilities are unique in the refinery market, and range from very low to high BTU gases, from high CO to high H2. Solar’s product portfolio utilizes process off gases from multiples of 9 MW to 50 MW fuel flow with LHV starting from 235 btu/Scf (2951 kJ/Nm3) in 3 MWe to 18 MWe. This allows quick deliveries and easy-to-install power/CHP units.  The biorefinery of the future will treat new feedstock, such as food waste, woody biomass and other biogenic feedstock, to produce biofuel and bio plastics. The increase of plastics’ recovery rates is bringing new feedstock to the refineries and petrochemical plants where it can be transformed by pyrolysis or gasification. The fuel flexibility of our gas turbines enables the use of various RFG, including syngas (from biomass or plastics gasification) that become available in the refinery. Solar’s equipment is also designed so that there is little to no impact on maintenance in order to keep businesses running.