Piston power |Large capacity installations


Power District, a public electric utility in Nebraska, USA. The plant will be part of the utility’s ‘Power with Purpose’ project, which will add 400 to 600 MW of utility-scale solar generation along with additional dispatchable balancing power. The new plant with its fast-starting reciprocating engines will be used to balance power generation to the grid.


The equipment will be delivered during the second half of 2022, with scheduled commercial operations due to begin in May 2023. Omaha Public Power District’s goal is to reach net-zero carbon emissions by 2050. The new Standing Bear Lake Station plant will be located in Douglas County, Nebraska, and will include nine 18-cylinder 50DF engines operating on natural gas and light fuel oil as needed. Wärtsilä’s multi-fuel engine technology provides fuel resiliency with engines capable of burning natural gas, light fuel oil, and hydrogen blends, and can later be converted to carbon neutral fuels.


New MAN plant to counter extreme weather


In April MAN Energy Solutions – together with China National Heavy Machinery Corporation – commissioned a 200 MW power plant near the Cambodian capital, Phnom Penh, and handed it over to national utility, Electricité du Cambodge.


Above: Brikama power plant, Gambia


The power plant consists of eleven MAN 18V51/60DF engines. CHMC was responsible for the engineering, procurement, and construction of the power plant, while MAN ES supplied and commissioned the engine unit and related plant auxiliaries.


The new power plant will make a significant contribution to the reliability of Cambodia’s power supply, which suffers from wide seasonal variations in its weather. In the dry seasons of recent years, the country’s national grid has faced stability issues due to the inability of its hydropower plants to operate at full capacity. In response, the government launched an emergency programme in 2019 to stabilise the supply system through flexible generation capacity.


The project followed a tight timeline, exacerbated by the Covid pandemic, to deliver and successfully commission all eleven engines in


less than 20 months, and did ultimately succeed. “For three months in the spring of 2020, our supervisors were only able to monitor the assembly of the plant remotely,” said Martin Höhler, head of Power, Asia Pacific Region at MAN ES. “However, thanks to digital tools, … and our excellent co-operation with CHMC, we were able to make up this time and maintain the ambitious schedule.”


The power plant will initially run on heavy fuel oil, however, it will be possible to operate the dual-fuel engines with lower-emission natural gas in the future.


MAN ES installs 225 MW in West Africa


MAN ES contracted in May to supply the power- generation technology for two new power plants in Mali and Senegal, and has completed two further plants in The Gambia and Guinea. The company is supplying 8 × 14V51/60 engines to a new power plant currently under construction in Sirakoro, in Mali, where demand for electrical energy is increasing by about 10% annually. The new plant in Sirakoro will increase the country’s total generation capacity by 25%. In Senegal, 6 × 9L51/60 engines will supply a cement factory with a total of 54 MW of electrical power. The ‘Les Ciments du Sahel’ factory – located 50 km from the capital, Dakar – has been using 4 × 18V32/40 engines to supply the production facility with electricity since 2009, but expansion of the plant has significantly increased its energy requirements.


Above: The 200 MW Phnom Penh power plant 38 | February 2020 | www.modernpowersystems.com


MAN ES has completed two projects in Guinea and The Gambia and handed over plants in the cities of Conakry and Brikama. In Conakry, the capital of Guinea, the company installed 6 × 18V32/40 engines for a power plant that will provide 53 MWe to a city of over a million.. In Brikama, The Gambia’s second-largest city, MAN ES has built and commissioned a power plant consisting of 2 × 9L51/60 engines, feeding 18 MWe to national grid and increasing the country’s generation capacity by around 20%.


Page 1  |  Page 2  |  Page 3  |  Page 4  |  Page 5  |  Page 6  |  Page 7  |  Page 8  |  Page 9  |  Page 10  |  Page 11  |  Page 12  |  Page 13  |  Page 14  |  Page 15  |  Page 16  |  Page 17  |  Page 18  |  Page 19  |  Page 20  |  Page 21  |  Page 22  |  Page 23  |  Page 24  |  Page 25  |  Page 26  |  Page 27  |  Page 28  |  Page 29  |  Page 30  |  Page 31  |  Page 32  |  Page 33  |  Page 34  |  Page 35  |  Page 36  |  Page 37  |  Page 38  |  Page 39  |  Page 40  |  Page 41  |  Page 42  |  Page 43  |  Page 44  |  Page 45