PowerSeraya may spend $80m
to repower steam plants
The Straits Times, 13 December 2003
By: Tang Weng Fai
SINGAPORE's second largest power generator by licensed capacity, PowerSeraya, yesterday said it was considering spending $80 million to repower up to four decommissioned steam plants to raise generation efficiency and trim costs.
The exercise will see the repowering of up to four units of old 60 megawatt (MW) steam generators at its Jurong site, and combining them with two other 105 MW gas turbines to form a hybrid combined cycle generator, it said.
The new plant at Jurong, when completed in the first half of 2005, will be able to operate using heavy sulphur fuel oil, gas and Orimulsion, an emulsion of bitumen suspended in water.
"The hybrid combined cycle generator will have a total capacity of some 400 MW, with some redundancy when complete," said Neil McGregor, the new CEO.
At the same time, PowerSeraya will decommission up to two of the existing nine units of 250 MW plant operating on Pulau Seraya.
No approval is needed from the Energy Market Authority (EMA) as it would still be within the 3,100 MW licensed capacity after the repowering exercise.
Mr McGregor explained the reasons for the repowering: "Each of the players in the new electricity market is in excess capacity, that's a fact. What that's signalling to me is that we have to get more efficient."
Operationally, the hybrid plant - if built - would be about 30 per cent more efficient than existing plants on PulauSeraya.
Combined cycle power plants are the latest generation of power plants that use waste heat from one turbine to generate steam to power a second one, thus increasing overall efficiency.
He said another advantage of the new hybrid plants is that they allow generation of power in chunks as small as 80 MW, so the genco can respond faster to variations in demand at a lower cost. Conventional combined cycle turbines have a base load of 180 MW and above, generating power in larger chunks.
In situations where energy market demand comes in chunks of less than 180 MW, the excess from these conventional combined cycle turbines would be wasted as power cannot be stored.
Mr. McGregor said the repowering exercise would have "very limited impact on the write down of impairment value".
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