Overview of the Combined-Cycle Power Plant
The gas-fired power plant has four 127-MW (ISO conditions) General Electric PG9171E gas turbines. In addition, it has two Franco Tosi CSD33A-50/1 steam turbines, each with a capacity of 200.4 MW.
During the plant’s past four years of operation, its net production of electricity has ranged from 4,512,249.9 MWh in 2006 to 4,198,149.5 MWh in 2009. During that same period, the plant’s availability has ranged from 93.19% in 2006 to 94.02% in 2009.
The main engineering, construction, and procurement contractor for the combined- cycle plant was ENEL Power. For the open-cycle portion of the plant, construction took 16 months; the plant was commissioned at open cycle in April 2003. Installation and commissioning of the steam turbines and desalination plant took an additional 11 months, and their commissioning was in May 2004. Total construction time for the combined-cycle and desalination plants was 27 months.
Because the power plant began operating in 2004, no major modification has been carried out. The equipment and machines are being maintained proactively to ensure the best availability and reliability of power and water supply to the off-taker.
Maintenance Practices
“ ‘Put safety first’ is our first core value, and we practically live it not only at the plant but in our daily life. The safety statistics demonstrate the same,” said James Noronha, the facility’s safety team leader, and Asim Riaz, the facility’s operations manager. “The last lost time accident [LTA] occurred in August 2006, and since then the plant has achieved 6,951,475 man-hours without any LTAs” (through May 2010).
“Great people are an organization’s best assets, and we value our O&M team of 76 members, which is bringing laurels to our company by setting and achieving the par excellence targets in operations and maintenance,” said Venkatachalam Kuppusami, the plant manager, and Zafar Iqbal, the engineering manager. “This small team has reduced the equivalent forced outage factor to 0.75% in 2008, 0.33% in 2009, and 0.21% up until June 2010.”
Ras Laffan personnel focus on predictive maintenance (PdM) rather than preventive maintenance (PM) and breakdown maintenance (BM). PdM is based on condition monitoring, and the staff proactively take advantage of the following techniques:
- Partial discharge monitoring on all generators
- Thermography of all major electrical and mechanical equipment
- Vibration analysis
- Boroscopic inspections
- Ultrasonic leak detection
- Lube oil analysis
- Ultrasonic thickness gauging
“We monitor the ratio of PM:PdM:BM measured in terms of man-hours spent on a monthly basis to refine our maintenance strategy,” said Muhammad Yaser, the condition monitoring and reliability engineer at the facility.
Environmental Initiatives
“Environment, health, and safety [HSE] have always been our top priorities,” said Anindya Sunder Chatterjee, the HSE coordinator. “We achieved ISO 14001 certification in 2006. We are regularly audited for implementation of environmental policies by leading auditors who follow stringent standards.”
To help conserve the environment, Ras Laffan management has reduced water consumption and hazardous chemical usage in the demineralization process by 50% to 60% through optimizing the mixed-bed regeneration process.
The RLPC is also pursuing a Clean Development Mechanism project, which allows countries with emission-related commitments under the Kyoto Protocol to implement an emission-reduction project in developing countries. It will reduce carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions by implementing a new energy efficiency project, which is projected to cut CO2 emissions by 7,030 tons and save approximately 132,915 mmBtu per year of natural gas.
— Angela Neville, JD, is POWER’s senior editor.
Email
Comments
Print
Reuse
