Complete, end-to-end cooling saves time and cost for power plant project

Indonesia’s thirst for power continues to surge as the country undergoes rapid development towards its ambitious economic goals. A Japanese EPC contractor was in the commissioning phase of a 2 GW coal-fired power plant construction project, but the sophisticated cooling system that uses sea and fresh water for the steam turbine ran into issues.

A permanent solution, which requires machinery parts to service the existing cooling system, will take more than six months to deliver as it is custom-made. However, the delivery of the power plant to the Independent Power Producer (IPP) owner cannot sustain delays due to power delivery commitments to the government. Monetary penalties were looming and both the EPC contractor and IPP owner needed to resolve this pressing situation to get the project delivered as scheduled.

The Japanese EPC contractor approached Aggreko, given our repute to solve complex temperature control challenges, to help resolve the tricky situation.

Our end-to-end turnkey support comprised engineering design, logistics, commissioning, operations, maintenance and decommissioning. The site visit and in-depth consultation between our engineers and the EPC contractors allowed all parties to cooperate closely for a robust solution. It also uncovered challenges such as space limitations within the power plant’s compound.

Our extensive fleet of rental cooling towers was perfect for the scenario as it allowed us to plan for and deploy the most compact equipment to work around the limitations. In this case, the GT20 Cooling Towers were chosen for this project as it has the most compact footprint within our fleet.

We deployed two GT20 cooling towers and four pumps as a complete replacement cooling system. This will treat fresh water at a high flow rate of 240m³/hour with an average temperature of 37ºC. it is then cooled to precisely 32 ºC for the oil cooler, which separates oil and water, as part of the steam turbine cooling process.

With an elaborate and tight commissioning schedule for the mega power plant, the cooling system, anchored by our new GT20 cooling towers, ensured the scheduled delivery to the IPP owner where essential work could continue unabated.

This also saved the IPP owner from a hefty monetary fine for delay of official electrification to the grid.