Successful POWER’s highest honor is Estrella del Mar III, a first-of-its-kind floating mixed cycle gasoline turbine energy barge that fulfills a outstanding assortment of recent energy system calls for. Practically absolutely inbuilt Singapore by a world workforce that delicately built-in shipbuilding and energy engineering, the pioneering SeaFloat plant sailed greater than 10,000 miles for remaining commissioning in Santo Domingo, capital of the Dominican Republic. The modern 148-MW venture exemplifies an environment friendly, ecological, economical, and resilient energy resolution that triumphs over land and price constraints.
In 2017, Transcontinental Capital Corp., a Seaboard impartial power-producing subsidiary, approached Siemens Power, requesting a power-generating resolution that was extra environment friendly and versatile than its present and beforehand owned fleet of power-generating engine barges within the Dominican Republic. At first, specialists at a Siemens Power (a Siemens spinoff that has operated as an impartial, publicly traded firm since 2020) gasoline turbine manufacturing campus in Finspång, Sweden, proposed an ordinary pure gasoline–fired land-based energy plant. However when Seaboard insisted that the answer would should be a floating energy barge because of house constraints, Finspång re-assessed the feasibility of floating a full-size industrial gasoline turbine energy plant and in the end accepted the problem.
1. Estrella del Mar III begins its journey internationally from Singapore, the place it was constructed, to its vacation spot on Ocoa Bay, Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic. Courtesy: Siemens Power
“That’s the way it began,” Jakob Tyroller, Normal Challenge Supervisor of the Estrella del Mar III, advised POWER. Over the following few years, the venture shortly garnered steam. Bolstered by a landmark collaboration with the marine arm of Singapore engineering group ST Engineering, the complicated first-of-its-kind venture took form on a self-supporting barge at a shipyard in Singapore. Following a difficult 46-day journey spanning 14,000 nautical miles internationally onboard a heavy-lift semi-submersible vessel (Determine 1), the practically accomplished plant arrived at its vacation spot on Ocoa Bay, Santo Domingo. On June 1, 2022, with scorching commissioning wrapped up, the venture—a imaginative and prescient realized—was formally delivered to Seaboard.
However Estrella del Mar III can be POWER’s 2023 Plant of the 12 months award winner as a result of the pioneering venture showcases an array of trade integration. Leveraging energy and marine engineering below a uniquely cast intercontinental partnership, the venture is anticipated to strengthen competence and floating energy options. As well as, the versatile gasoline turbine mixed cycle energy plant—which may be simply modified for combusting hydrogen as wanted— integrates a battery vitality storage resolution, making certain Estrella del Mar III will probably be geared up to handle current and future hurdles anticipated inside a quickly altering energy panorama. Right now, whereas the plant ensures the reliability of a power-hungry area, it additionally supplies cost-effective energy, and in keeping with its proprietor, it’s the best energy plant within the Dominican Republic’s energy system.
A Customized Answer
Floating energy vegetation aren’t novel—they’ve been used extensively as a supply of versatile decentralized energy era for many years, primarily as a result of they are often constructed cost-effectively and quickly, and they’re cellular, which implies they are often relocated and traded. As well as, they are often deployed even in probably the most distant places and below difficult ambient circumstances, each for short-term or everlasting energy. However for Seaboard’s Transcontinental Capital Corp., energy barges win out over land-based vegetation for 2 further key causes. The primary is that they keep away from land constraints and associated prices in dense city environments. And second, the corporate holds prolonged expertise owing and working energy barges.
In 1990, when Transcontinental grew to become the primary impartial energy producer within the Dominican Republic, it initiated operations with the 40-MW Estrella del Norte, a barge geared up with Wärtsilä reciprocating engines. In 2000, it put in a second 72-MW Wärtsilä-engine barge, Estrella del Mar (it bought each barges in 2009). And in 2012, it started working a 3rd barge, the 104-meter(m)-long Estrella del Mar II. Comprising six Wärtsilä 18V50DF dual-fuel engines in mixed cycle mode, the 108-MW facility continues operations. Seaboard has publicly disclosed, nevertheless, that it’s exploring the sale or relocation of the barge.
In 2017, the corporate complied with a state request to exchange the barge’s energy with a brand new pure gasoline–fired energy plant ostensibly to reap effectivity positive aspects with a smaller emissions profile. A important key problem Seaboard confronted was to maintain prices aggressive. “For Seaboard’s Energy section, the Dominican authorities units a cap on the electrical energy spot market costs and establishes the dispatch order of who sells into the ability grid based mostly on a advantage record. To promote to the ability grid, Seaboard competes with producers using varied sorts of gas and era applied sciences, together with hydro, photo voltaic, wind, pure gasoline, heavy gas oil, diesel or coal,” Seaboard defined in current monetary paperwork. “Usually, dispatch is completed based mostly on a advantage record with lower-cost energy vegetation dispatched earlier than these with larger prices,” it stated.
After exploring the feasibility of a pure gas-fired barge-mounted energy plant with a capability of as much as 150 MW with Siemens Power, Seaboard in November 2018 contracted a consortium comprising Siemens Power and ST Engineering’s marine arm for a SCC-800 2x1C SeaFloat energy plant. Underneath the contract, the consortium got down to present a “turnkey plug-and-play” idea. Heading up the ability portion, Siemens Power assumed the duty of supplying two SST-600 steam generators, and two once-through steam mills (OTSGs). As well as, Siemens Power supplied a 5-MW/10-MWh BESS for frequency regulation management. The hybrid resolution was designed to assist “the plant to function at full capability with highest gas effectivity,” and “at a decrease value [compared to a] comparable land-based energy plant,” Siemens Power famous.
ST Engineering’s Marine section, which is a longtime turnkey shipbuilder, in the meantime, took cost of the engineering design, procurement, and development of the self-supporting barge, the stability of plant, transport of the floating energy plant to the Dominican Republic, and set up of the floating energy plant. ST Engineering additionally assumed the duty of constructing the plant on the barge at its Benoi shipyard in Singapore.
All Palms on Deck
From the beginning, the workforce set out a rigorous work plan to fulfill a decent timeframe of 28.5 months. The primary activity concerned designing the first-of-its-kind energy plant with a clean slate. “We began with a plate of metal,” remembers Tyroller.
The workforce’s essential problem was to suit all of the venture’s parts on a barge, together with its liquefied pure gasoline gas provide. Different concerns included making certain the barge wouldn’t block the river and that its top clearances wouldn’t exceed bridges on the Ozama River.
In Singapore, an ST Engineering workforce pooled a number of software program packages to digitalize your complete design course of, together with 3D modeling, stress evaluation, and optimization options. Simulations, notably, included noise emissions from structural-borne and airborne noise contributors. “Given the complexity of the method and excessive voltage methods, we’re taking each precaution to make sure that all operations are meticulously deliberate and carried out. Mitigations embrace partaking consultants, countless hours of evaluate, and detailed research of the methods that may develop into a part of the floating system,” famous Terry Heng, ST Engineering Marine’s Challenge Engineer, in 2019 because the venture was nicely underway.
“Seaboard’s engineers shaped an integral a part of the general workforce in Singapore and the Dominican Republic, supporting with their huge information on energy barges throughout design, development, and commissioning,” added Tyroller. “Working collectively as one workforce made the venture profitable, regardless of the varied obstacles.”
Engineering a Marvel
Among the venture’s many different notable design parts is that it integrated vitality re-generation and wastewater air pollution management “in a bid to attain optimistic environmental influence,” ST Engineering reported. “Power re-generation was achieved by channeling the exhaust from the gasoline turbine via the [two OTSGs] to generate pressurized steam to run the steam turbine. The re-using of exhaust warmth vitality permits the steam-water cycle to supply cleaner vitality. On the identical time, it considerably improves the plant’s total effectivity from 37% as much as 56%,” it stated.
The OTSGs, which have been elevated above the gasoline turbine at Estrella del Mar III, characteristic superior supplies suited to temperatures as excessive as 600C to resist the total influence of the gasoline turbine exhaust. The OTSGs additionally make the most of small-diameter tubes and modular development, permitting for a light-weight and compact design. And since the OTSGs have once-through move paths, no steam drums or blowdown methods have been required.
In the meantime, Siemens Power’s industrial gasoline turbine engineering and manufacturing workforce in Finspong, Sweden, and the steam turbine innovation campus in Goerlitz, Germany, additionally set to work to deal with the ability plant’s weight and measurement. To suit on a barge 80 m lengthy and 35 m extensive, the ability barge wanted to be 50% the scale of an everyday comparable plant. However although optimized for weight and measurement, Estrella del Mar III weighs 9,300 tons (“a ton lower than the Eiffel Tower,” Siemens Power famous).
Siemens Power’s resolution was to make the most of first-of-a-kind single-lift package deal designs. “It’s the gasoline turbine, the gearbox, and the generator, all [placed] on one base body,” famous Tyroller. “And the identical for the steam turbine,” he stated. Parts from Siemens Power’s manufacturing services have been despatched to Hamburg, Germany, the place they have been positioned on a base body after which shipped to Singapore as “three large items as a substitute of multiples,” he stated. On the shipyard in Singapore, the modules have been additional mixed as blocks on land earlier than being lifted onto the barge (Determine 2).
2. Estrella del Mar III’s development was carried out at ST Engineering’s Benoi shipyard in Singapore. To maximise house utilization, every part is optimized with regard to operate and footprint. For instance, the SGT-800 is used as a pre-assembled single-lift full package deal with a small footprint. Courtesy: ST Engineering
The modern design additionally contains a three-point mount. “If you happen to construct on a floating system, you need to handle the problem of movement—roll and pitch, in addition to accelerations and deflection,” famous Hamed Hossain, Enterprise Proprietor of Siemens Power’s SeaFloat section. “The three-point mount basis decouples the deflection of the hull and the gasoline turbine itself.” Hossain famous that the plant is designed with” a three-degree roll and pitch limitation.”
Regardless of the tight configuration to optimize energy density, the plant is designed to facilitate operations and upkeep, Hossain added. “There’s sufficient house out there,” he famous (an interactive tour of the plant may be accessed right here). “The wonder is there’s a sliding idea which means you simply open the doorways of the SGT-800 package deal, slide out the gasoline turbine core, and usher in, for instance, a spare core into the gasoline turbine package deal—which may take round 48 hours most. So, the change may be very quick,” he stated.
A New Adaptation for the SGT-800
In 1998, after three years of growth, Siemens (now Siemens Power) launched the SGT-800 to the market. On the time, the single-shaft engine—composed of a 2-bearing rotor with a 15-stage compressor and a 3-stage turbine—was geared to quickly shifting market circumstances that demanded optimized efficiency, a lowered environmental footprint, in addition to excessive availability and reliability. The commercial gasoline turbine’s evolution over the previous 25 years has benefitted from prototype testing, greater than 7 million equal working hours from greater than 370 gasoline generators bought worldwide, computational updates, and manufacturing and materials advances, and at present, its score has ramped up from an preliminary 43 MW(e) to 62 MW(e).
A driver for current development has been to fulfill rising flexibility and gas diversification wants. Siemens Power notes the turbine mannequin may be fired solely with pure gasoline, diesel No. 2, or twin gas with an on-load gas changeover functionality. The gas flexibility, enabled by DLE burners on the engine, also can burn a excessive content material of inert gases. Together with a 75% quantity of hydrogen, that features heavy hydrocarbons within the gasoline gas composition.
For Estrella del Mar III, nevertheless, the midsize turbine mannequin was an ideal match owing to house constraints on the floating vessel, stated Normal Challenge Supervisor Jakob Tyroller. As well as, the mannequin’s low gasoline provide strain requirement (27–31 bar[a] / 390–450 psi[a]) lowered the necessity for a gasoline compressor on web site.
Siemens Power notes, nevertheless, that its SeaFloat energy plant vary supplies a alternative of various sizes of mixed cycles starting from aeroderivatives (the SGT-A35 mannequin) through smaller-sized gasoline generators with SGT-400 or SGT-750 to heavy-duty gasoline generators (with the SGT-8000H). The know-how alternative is often optimized to venture specs for energy output, effectivity, and cargo regime, and purposes may be personalized to various kinds of floating gadgets, akin to a easy barge (demonstrated by Estrella del Mar III), typical oil and gasoline platforms, floating manufacturing and offloading items (FPSO), or floating storage regasification and energy items (FSRPU). Whereas the open-cycle collection could be a more sensible choice to stability out excessive fluctuations in energy demand and provide (akin to from offshore wind farms), SeaFloat vegetation with bigger heavy-duty generators may substitute previous energy vegetation with out brownfield dangers, the corporate suggests
Overcoming a Sequence of Challenges
The largest danger the venture confronted, in keeping with Tyroller, was from its transportation from the shipyard greater than 10,o00 miles to its vacation spot in Santo Domingo (Determine 3). When it set sail in March 2021 after a brief dry-docking onboard a heavy carry semi-submersible vessel, the plant was solely lacking its remaining stack piece. “The idea was completely new for us,” Tyroller famous. “It’s the most important stress on the gear as a result of that’s the place you’ve got the [most] movement, going abroad. On the remaining vacation spot, the place it’s a river, it’s pretty calm,” he famous.
3. Getting Estrella del Mar III to its vacation spot in Santo Domingo concerned a 46-day journey. The transportation route took the plant via the Strait of Malacca, a slim stretch of water between the Malay Peninsula and Indonesia, previous a large stretch of the Indian Ocean, and round Africa, the place it entered the Atlantic Ocean, and at last, the Caribbean Sea. The plant reached its vacation spot on Ocoa Bay on April 28, 2021, and it was commissioned on June 1, 2022. Courtesy: ST Engineering
Compounding the problem was working inside the restricted time that the workforce had entry to a dry tow vessel, which tugged the barge to its remaining web site. “The problem with a dry-tow vessel is you need to guide it nicely upfront to get a window, and after they present up, you higher be prepared,” stated Tyroller. Dry-tow vessels (Determine 4) are “very uncommon and really costly, so you may lose a number of months in the event you miss it,” he stated. Nevertheless, the 46-day journey was largely easy, he famous.
One other insidious danger was posed by the COVID pandemic. “Singapore was shut down for a lot of months,” Tyroller recalled. “Then, at a sure time, you may go in and get two weeks quarantine in a resort room. So, getting individuals there and gear there was extremely tough throughout these instances.”
What does it take to construct a barge for a floating energy plant that gives a extremely environment friendly, cellular, and self-supporting vitality provide? This video from ST Engineering shares how the multinational workforce pooled collectively applied sciences and engineering experience to construct Estrella Del Mar III. Courtesy: ST Engineering
Scorching commissioning of the first-of-the-kind venture additionally furnished the venture with new trials. Throughout commissioning, two hurricanes handed intently within the Caribbean Sea, although the plant suffered no injury. The worldwide provide chain crunch exacerbated by the Russian-Ukraine warfare in early 2022, in the meantime, rendered new difficulties to exchange the venture’s first-of-a-kind gearboxes owing to a scarcity of cargo planes.
The delays have been pricey, however the effort paid off immensely. “As a consortium, we at all times have the widespread purpose in thoughts—to ship the SeaFloat to Seaboard and present how we are able to make a distinction,” stated Tyroller. “It is a groundbreaking venture for us, which has now been transferred to business operation. Along with our prospects and companions, your complete workforce has proven immense power and perseverance all through the venture, via the varied phases. We must always all be happy with this widespread success and rejoice this nice achievement of our first extremely environment friendly hybrid energy barge.”
4. Estrella del Mar III’s arrival within the vibrant metropolis of Santo Domingo, the Dominican Republic’s capital. Courtesy: Siemens Power
A New Era of Floating Energy Vegetation
According to Hossain, the venture to develop and construct Estrella del Mar III has been pivotal on a number of totally different ranges. The combination of energy engineering and marine engineering has served up myriad advantages, he famous. Together with efficiently producing a refined design and energy gear match for floating energy, the design supplies optimum house utilization and excessive energy density. It in the end additionally broadened workforce horizons. “The Singapore development workforce was made up of individuals from very totally different occupations, from shipbuilders to energy plant engineers. Engineers needed to become familiar with nautical phrases, akin to port and starboard, fore and aft,” he famous. “They discovered what a booby hatch is (the enclosed stairway from the principle deck into the hull), and totally different phrases for partitions, relying on how they’re used (frames or bulkheads).”
Lastly, as Siemens Power’s first SeaFloat venture, Estrella del Mar III has demonstrated essential market attributes, together with the deserves of a diversified worth chain. For instance, constructing energy vegetation in Asia permits prospects to “carry Asian market worth degree to your complete world,” Hossain stated.
“In some international locations, the labor prices are very excessive or labor isn’t out there,” he famous. “These are constraints for impartial energy producers—our prospects—and they might not have these sorts of dangers on the finish of the day.” The idea may also enable energy plant builders to construct vegetation in a protected, managed setting. Yet one more SeaFloat profit Estrella del Mar III exemplifies is that older energy vegetation can proceed working till the brand new one is accomplished with out disruption to the prevailing provide.
—Sonal Patel is a POWER senior affiliate editor (@sonalcpatel, @POWERmagazine).