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POWER Digest [February 2020]

Indonesia Readying to Build 145-MW Floating Solar Plant. Pembangkitan Jawa Bali (PJB), a subsidiary of Indonesian state electricity company PT PLN, is planning to begin construction of the $129 million Cirata floating solar power plant in West Java in 2021 with support from Abu Dhabi–based Masdar. PLN Strategic Procurement Director Sripeni Inten Cahyani told reporters on Jan. 7 that development of the 145-MW floating plant will begin when PLN signs a power purchase agreement (PPA) with Masdar later in the month. The companies will then look to achieve financial close within a year. The project will likely be built in two phases; the first 50-MW could be completed in 2022. Plans to build the project kicked off in 2017, when PLN and Masdar signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) to develop it. As the Jakarta Post noted, initially the plant had an estimated potential of 200 MW and was estimated to cost $300 million, but PLN “had to revise the MoU after the government abruptly changed a regulation over the appointment of power plant developers.” If built, the project could become Indonesia’s largest solar power plant. The vast Southeast Asian archipelago of more than 17,500 islands is endowed with some of the world’s largest reserves of fossil fuels, but it has set a target to produce 23% of its primary energy with renewables by 2025. According to REN21, in 2018, the renewables share stood at 13%.

CGN: Hongyanhe ACPR-1000 Reactors Delayed. Commercial operation of Units 5 and 6 at the Hongyanhe nuclear power plant in China’s Liaoning province has been delayed by about 18 months China General Nuclear (CGN) announced in a statement to the Hong Kong Stock Exchange on Dec. 27. CGN holds a 45% stake in Liaoning Hongyanhe Nuclear Power Co. (LHNP), the plant’s owner and operator. State Power Investment Corp. owns another 45% share and Dalian Municipal Construction Investment Co. owns the remainder. CGN said the delays stem from a “number of technical improvement measures in the construction process of the project,” and that it implemented the schedule adjustment to avoid construction-related risks. The Hongyanhe Nuclear Power Plant, a POWER magazine Top Plant in 2014, has four existing units, all of CPR-1000 design. Construction of these units began in August 2009. Units 1, 2, 3, and 4 began commercial operation in June 2013, May 2014, August 2015, and September 2016, respectively. Construction on Units 5 and 6, which are CGN-designed ACPR-1000 reactors, began in March 2015 and July 2015, respectively. CGN began cold functional testing of Unit 5 last October. CGN began operation of China’s first ACPR-1000 at Yangjiang 5 in July 2018 following a stunning 58-month construction period (the project was a 2019 POWER Top Plant). Another ACPR-1000, Yangjiang 6, came online in July 2019. The plant has been pivotal in providing lessons for the country’s ACPR-1000 units at Hongyanhe 5 and 6, and Tianwan 5 and 6, CGN said. In early January, meanwhile, LHNP announced that it planned to build a cooling seawater intake structure on the north side of the Hongyanhe plant area, as well as an ice-proof diversion levee and “two pollution prevention nets” outside the intake structure. The structure is necessary because reliability of the existing Hongyanhe units has been afflicted by “seasonal outbreaks” of jellyfish, it said.

Gazprom Opens TurkStream Gas Pipeline. Russia and Turkey on Jan. 8 officially opened the TurkStream pipeline, boosting the Russian state-owned gas giant Gazprom’s plans to export 15.75 billion cubic meters (bcm) per year of natural gas to Turkey and 15.75 bcm/year to Bulgaria, Serbia, and Hungary in a route that bypasses Ukraine and Romania. The pipeline will stretch 930 kilometers under the Black Sea when fully completed. The project is being built in two phases. Pipe-laying for the first section was completed within 15 months in November 2018, and construction of the receiving terminal in Turkey was finished in 2019. The second section, which will serve as a transit to southern and southeastern Europe through Turkey, is expected to begin operating by the end of this year. The project uses, for the first time, 813-millimeter-diameter pipe that was laid at a depth of 2,200 meters.

Siemens Gamesa Acquires Senvion’s Assets, Intellectual Property. Spanish wind turbine giant Siemens Gamesa Renewable Energy (SGRE) on Jan. 9 completed its €200 million acquisition of German competitor Senvion, a company that has installed more than 8,200 onshore and offshore wind turbines with rated outputs of between 2 MW and 6.33 MW since 2001. SGRE said the acquisition, which includes Senvion’s European service assets and intellectual property (IP) adds 9 GW to its own serviced fleet. It means that SGRE’s multibrand footprint is now larger than 10 GW, and its fleet under maintenance is about 69 GW. The acquired assets also help diversify SGRE’s “business and geographical exposure, the company said.

First WindFloat Floating Wind Turbine Begins Operations in Portugal. The first of three 8.4-MW floating platforms that will make up the 25-MW WindFloat Atlantic wind farm on Dec. 31 began supplying power to the Portuguese grid via a 20-kilometer cable connected to a substation in Viana do Castello, northern Portugal. The other two units will be connected “successively,” said the Windplus consortium, the project’s developer, which comprises EDP Renewables (54.4%), Engie (25%), Repsol (19.4%), and Principle Power Inc. (1.2%). Developers said the achievement marked a “significant technological leap” for wind power. The WindFloat Atlantic units comprise 8.4-MW V164 MHI Vestas wind turbines installed atop semi-submersible floating platforms. The platforms, which were built as a cooperative effort by Spain and Portugal, will be anchored to the seabed with chains at a depth of 100 meters. They are designed to be transported by standard towing craft, “as opposed to [fixed-bottom] projects, which require expensive vessels to be mobilized for transport,” the consortium noted. Their onshore assembly also helps “scale-back” logistics, financial, and environmental costs associated with marine construction. “All of these technological advantages make it viable for the project to be replicated anywhere in the world, at a much larger scale,” it said. The project is also notable because it is the world’s first application of dynamic cables (supplied by JDR Cables) operating at 66 kV. ■

Sonal Patel is a POWER senior associate editor.

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