NEWS


Power failures in Type 45 Royal Navy destroyers likely to go on until 2019 upgrade


Substation Jacket for Rampion


Babcock International Group, the UK’s leading engineering support services company, has successfully completed a major milestone of its contract to construct a 1,100 tonne, 42-metre long, offshore sub- station jacket for the Rampion Offshore Wind Farm.


the near 2000 tonne topside structure, which is due to load out from Babcock’s Firth of Forth facility in 2017.


ngine failures on Britain’s Type 45 destroyers have been substantially reduced, but a final solution to the problems awaits implementation of a yet-to-be-approved power improvement plan, Defence Secretary Sir Michael Fallon reported to the Parliamentary Defence Committee. Fallon declined to publicly detail the extent of the problem with the destroyers' power plant has said that remedial action meant that: “In broad terms, current failure rates are one third of those experienced in 2010.” The Type 45 uses a pioneering system called Integrated Electric Propulsion (IEP). There are many advantages associated with IEP, fuel efficiency, flexibility in locating the engines and a supposedly reduced maintenance and manning requirement. In basic terms, two WR-21 gas turbines (GTs) and two Wartsila 2MW diesel generators provide AC power for the motors that propel the ship as well as the power for the ships systems – weapons, sensors, lighting, etc. The WR-21 GTs were designed in an international


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partnership with Rolls Royce and Northrop Grumman Marine Systems. The turbines have an intercooler- recuperator which recovers heat from the exhaust and recycles it into the engine, making it more fuel-efficient and reducing the ship’s thermal signature.


Unfortunately the intercooler unit has a major design flaw and causes the GTs to fail occasionally. When this happens, the electrical load on the diesel generators can become too great and they ‘trip out’, leaving the ship with no source of power or propulsion.


The MoD has not revealed how frequently these blackouts have occurred but the first 2 ships, HMS Daring and HMS Dauntless seem to have suffered the most. The first indication of problems was as far back as 2010 when it was admitted HMS Daring lost all power in mid- Atlantic and had to be repaired in Canada. The BBC reports that it had seen an email from a serving Royal Navy officer saying that "total electric failures are common" on the destroyers earmarked to help protect Britain’s new 65,000-ton aircraft carriers when they enter service later in the decade.


From 2019 each will begin to undergo a major refit that will probably involve cutting a large hole to insert at least one new diesel generator into the ship. The work will be staggered to ensure the Navy still has ships to send on operations. The MoD has so far not given any details on cost. A former naval officer, Rear Admiral Chris Parry, said the problems could not continue: "It's rather like buying a high- priced television to watch your favourite football team but because you don't have secure power supplies, the power goes off about every 10 minutes.” He concludes: "You can't have that in combat, you can't even have that in normal operations - it is not safe."


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This is the first major wind farm contract secured from its Rosyth base - with work progressing on two further wind farm contracts at the site.


The two-year Rampion contract involves the engineering, procurement and onshore construction of the 400MW sub-station topside and jacket, managed by a specialist team at Rosyth. The jacket, now installed at the offshore site by other contractors on behalf of Rampion is ready to receive


The contract involves a variety of skilled workers including welders, steel workers, structural engineers, electrical engineers, procure- ment specialists & integration specialists, to name but a few. The current phase of the project sees Rampion’s electrical contractor installing and commissioning the trans- mission equipment prior to the Site Integration Test. Willie Watson, Operations Director of Energy & Marine Services at Babcock International Group, told UKPN:


sub-station jacket for the Rampion Offshore Wind Farm has been a significant project


“The construction of the


for our Babcock Rosyth base and our first wind farm project here, utilising the wealth of engineering, project manage- ment and procurement skills and experience that we have developed over many years.” He explains:“We are pleased to see the work come to fruition with the successful installation of the jacket and look forward to continuing our relationship with Rampion and its other contractors, on delivering the remaining milestones for this project.” Following the Rampion


Offshore Wind Farm sub- station project, Babcock has secured a contract with DONG Energy to support the development of its offshore wind farm, called ‘Hornsea Project One’.


In the summer of 2016, Babcock was also awarded a contract to build two Offshore Transformer Modules for the Beatrice Offshore Windfarm Limited (BOWL) project in the Outer Moray Firth. Working with the Germany- based Siemens Transmission and Distribution, Babcock has pledged to deliver the first of the Offshore Transformer Modules during the first half of 2018. An offshore transformer module (OTM) can be installed with various manu- facturers’ turbines, either on a dedicated foundation or, to maximize savings, on an existing foundation .


What can the Royal Navy do to rectify its electrical generator problems?


“Each vessel will have to be dry-docked, large openings cut in the hull and one - or possibly two - new diesel generator sets put into place.”


feasibility study into upgrading the generators was completed by BAES and the MoD in March 2015. The funding for the ‘Type 45 machinery improvement package’ was agreed in the November 2015 SDSR and at least the problem has finally been recognised and funds are in place. Each vessel will have to be dry-docked, large openings cut in the hull and one or possibly two new diesel generator sets put into place. Replacement of the WR-21 GTs is thought not to be not a practical option. Instead additional or more powerful diesel generators will provide long-term redundancy and assurance that electrical supplies can be maintained in the event of GT failure. The good news is that the large Type 45 design has the space and reserve buoyancy to cope with larger or additional diesels. The rectification work on the six ships will be done one by one as part of the normal major refit cycle after 2019. This will extend the length of the refits but should not have an especially dramatic effect on frontline availability.


A WR-21 GTs. DECEMBER ‐ JANUARY 2017 UK POWER NEWS


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