110 Megawatt emergency generator ? 1

[hmchi]

A high-tech company is planning to build a manufacturing facility, when in full operation, will consume 220MW of electricity. The manufacturing process is very sophisticated involving precision control and manipulation equipment and high energy use at the same time. A black out would cause extensive damage and losses.

If a power outage does occur, the company wants to have at least half of the electrical power capacity available within the plant, or 110MW, to keep the plant running at reduced capacity and minimum losses. The question is how to build this 110MW of emergency power ?

The advice they currently received is to use 55 Diesel Generators, each rated 2MW, which is less than ideal --- the facility needs to be a multi-story building where space is a premium, let alone the high civil and mechanical costs.

What would you recommend ? Would you recommend gas turbines running in hot standby ? with DGs as black-start power ? What size machines would you recommend ? They must be able to have the generators picking up the load 10 to 15 seconds after the blackout.

They must be prepared to sustain a blackout lasting a week to 10 days.

Being a hi-tech company, the facility may be obsoleted in 5 to 7 years so they are not interested in investing in a utility class generating plant that may last 30 years.

Your comments will be welcomed.

 

[hmchi]

110MW UPS is big ... impractical ?

Not if you break it down to 10 or 20 MW chunks. which are currently running very well in wafer fabs in USA and Asia.

Part of my question is the 'wisdom' or 'risk' in breaking them down to 10 to 20 MW sizes and 'divide and conquer'.

Thus my question about practicality of synchronizing these many chunks after they have survived the black out.

 

[jbartos]

Suggestion: Emergency generators about 10MW are often used at Nuclear Power Plant Facilities to power the safety related systems. They are starting in 10 seconds or shorter time period.

 

[hmchi]

jbartos,

Can you provide maker name and website ? Thanks

 

[peebee]

hmchi: regarding "This is what they are thinking --- breaking down the essential loads into 10 MW blocks and run 5 generators in a bus. The other thought is --- to use the UPS to provide a sych signal for the generator to start and sync. Question, do you guys think this will keep all the 11 groups of gen's synchronized ?" -- I'm not quite sure what you're asking here. Synchronization is not a problem technically. Synchronization of 110MW in 15 seconds, though, is essentially a practical impossibility.

See if you can reduce or eliminate the need to synchronize. Do you really need to synchronize ANY of your generators? How far will tie breakers or automatic transfer switches get you?

Regarding the amount of power: It doesn't surprise me at all. I'm guessing this is a half-million to one-million square foot carrier hotel, network access point, or similar. That would give a total emergency power density of about 110 to 220 w/sf, and a UPS power density of about 50 to 100 w/sf. That would be a big facility with moderate power densities. MANY of these were being built in 1999-2002, although they currently have varying rates of occupancy. MANY third-world countries STILL have an immediate need to develop such facilities. Don't be too put off by the above skepticism, I was personally involved on a very similar project in Brazil.

There's one sticking point where my above guess does not match up with your project description: There's not too many SINGLE tenants who would occupy the total 1,000,000 sf, usually such installations are multi-tenant. However, usually, in multi-tenant installations, the tenants will absolutely NOT share their generators with other tenants or the landlord, they all want to own & maintain their own generator systems. That would mean something like (10) 11MW systems rather than (1) 110MW system.

The other really weird thing about the description is that only half of the power is considered critical -- why not al of it? Something doesn't ring true there. Is the factor of 2 due to 2N redundancy or something?

Some other thoughts:

Natural gas should generally NOT be considered as a backup source, there's too great a likelihood of simultaneous failure of gas & electric utilities. Propane storage can be used to circumvent that, but propane brings a whole slew of headaches with it -- not the least of which being that big propane tanks make for great bombs.

I'd almost guarantee that diesel is the way to go. At .07gph/kW, you're burning 7700gph at full generator load. For 24 hours, that's only 185,000 gallons, not unmanageable. Two weeks' fuel though, at 2.6 million gallons, starts to get a bit out of hand.

 

[BJC]

hmchi

Sounds like a fun job.
If thats the load you really have I'd bust it up in small sections and keep them simple. I would not try to synch all 55 generators. Put 6 on a buss and use 10 busses. Keep it as simple as possible. Breaking it down will make it easier to engineer, install and operate. You can build it as the plant is finished out.

All in all it sounds like a job that mere money and time will fix.
Figure out how much real estate and money you need and go.


The Fairbanks Morse opposed cylinder engines are good for up to 3 MW. They have been around for years. With an air start system they will pick up load in less than 10 seconds. They use an air starter motor as well as air injected directly into the cylinders for starting. The installations I have worked with were installed with electric oil pumps(running all the time until the engine started water jacket and oil heaters.

http://www.fairbanksmorse.com/engines/engines.htm

 

[peebee]

Thoughts on generator redundancy:

You probably are looking for at least N+1, although 2N or even 2(N+1) wouldn't surprise me.

Assuming N+1, that probably means one redundant genset for every 2 to 6 base required gensets. That means 16 to 50% spare capacity, which means total installed generating capacity of 128 to 165MW, rather than your 110MW base need. . . .

 

[hmchi]

peebee,

Thanks for your input. It is a manufacturing process, not a computer farm. They would not tell us much for the IP protection but supposedly it involves melting solids in large quantities and need careful control and manipulation.

 

[peebee]

Oops, somehow I got it into mind that you said data center, when in fact you did say manufacturing. Not that that changes things much, only means that my above analysis was off and in fact it probably is one tenant.

 

[dede61]

I would sugest reconsidder with youre customer and proposed a complete power station of theyre own as primary use and use as backup system the local utility (if they can handle this load comming suddenly to the grid). Anyhow I would propose to use gas turbines and use them as primary source (combined heat / energy, cycle so you have also heat available). Anyhow for gas or diesel engine power generating look at

http://www.wartsila.com.

regards, Danny

 

[pablo02]

AS far as combustion turbines, the units the size of 60-70MW will generally take 10 minutes from a dead start to base load; this time can be shortened to 3-4 minutes for emergency service, but will probably require an overhaul as soon as the unit comes back off line... the larger ones will take still longer to come on line;

As far as the nuclear DG sets, I think the time frame is longer than 10 seconds (but they are required to operate in a short time frame -- I knew at one time, but ...)

You have your work cut out for you --

 

[60hzhmmm]

My 2 bits or one maybe.

Must have 110MW backed up. 220MW normally. Why not run your own two 110MW units? One chokes you still have your other. Add a third if needed. It could take 30minutes to get there in case one of the others choked because you've still got your 110MW covered. Don't turbines have about the life u require? Why pay all those bucks to even deal with a lame utility. All the sychonization of armadas of generators... This is somehow simpler than just providing your own full time power?? Seems to me simplicity is king when dealing with these "it must not go down" situations.

Ah well good luck.

 

[alehman]

Caterpillar produces packaged diesels up to 4MW. A group of 4 to 10 of these can probably be synchronized in 20 to 30 seconds, depending on how you sequence adding loads. Adding loads to a bus where synchornizing is ongoing will slow the process considerably. I've seen Cummins/Onan systems sync up very quickly (six 2M units in 7 to 10sec), but their maximum size is 2MW. Also sync speed is variable and sometimes unpredicable. Also have had problems with their control systems in the past.

Maintenance for this many engines will be a huge job. There are lots of pre-owned (many unused) 2M units from the dot-com bust on the market in the U.S.

 

[jbartos]

Suggestion: Visit

http://www.antipope.org/charlie/rant/torness.html

for:
....there are four twelve megawatt diesel generator stations spaced around each corner of the plant -- each with two generators, any one of which is able to provide operating power to keep the reactor's safety systems. working

 

[jbartos]

Suggestion: Check with
Waukesha Engine
1000 W. St. Paul Ave.
Waukesha, WI 53188
USA
Tel: 262-547-3311
Fax: 262-650-5670

Product Description
Mfrs. Natural Gas Fueled, Reciprocating Engines Of 100 To 4500 Horsepower Primarily Used In Gas Gathering & Power Generating Applications. Complete Engine/Generator Packages From 100 KW To 10 Megawatts

 

[jbartos]

Suggestion: Visit

http://www.kato-eng.com

http://www.kato-eng.com/enggens.html

etc. for more info

 

[l1d3]

You don't want to get into the business of Power Generation. On the long run it would be better to negotiate with the power grid to get to feeders from different circuits or from different power sources, with automatic switchover in case of a failure of the main feeder.
This way you can concentrate on a small diesel generator for safety loads and emergency lighting.

 

[l1d3]

You don't want to get into the business of Power Generation. On the long run it would be better to negotiate with the power grid to get two feeders from different circuits or from different power sources, with automatic switchover in case of a failure of the main feeder.
This way you can concentrate on a small diesel generator for safety loads and emergency lighting.

 

[advidana]

when you design your facility provide fuel storage and parking for the convoy of truck suppling the fuel for 10 days.

 

[60hzhmmm]

http://www.bath.ac.uk/~ccsshb/12cyl/

Back up power?
Check this out! What 80MW diesel.

 

[5791]

The good idea is to design the plant process such that they are able to atleast stop in a proper manner with your available minimum back up power it is good to provide UPS for very complicated system. and DG Sets for some big systems. And make a contract to some agency which is able to provide power by some nearest power station without interference with the whole grid system within some fix period. it may be upto 45-60 minutes and produces not much losses.