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Oil & Gas
Tysvær is a small Norwegian town a good two
hours by car north of Stavanger. It is well off
the beaten track even for the most adventurous
of holidaymakers. But it is a place that has
something special to offer, nevertheless. This
is where the world’s third-largest natural gas
processing plant, the Kårstø facility, is located.
It is an industrial complex in the middle of
nowhere; a landscape of tanks, pipes and
chimneys. Middle of nowhere it may be, but this
spot is undeniably a nerve-center. Around a third
of Norway’s natural gas is exported from this
processing plant. Pipelines connect the facility
to the 50 or so offshore fields that supply the gas
that is processed here and fed into the European
supply grid. If Kårstø were to stop working,
the entire Norwegian oil and gas supply would
collapse within a very short time. Little wonder,
therefore, that everything is done to make sure
the plant keeps running.
In the past few years, Kårstø has grown to five
times its original size – and it is set to become
even bigger. “We want to renew parts of the plant
so as to make operating Kårstø safe, reliable and
efficient for many more years,” explained Asbjørn
Søndenå, electrical systems commissioning
manager at Norway’s leading natural gas and
oil producer, Statoil. Western Europe’s secondlargest
natural gas supplier after Russian
energy giant Gazprom, Statoil is responsible
for technical operation of the facility and is
in charge of technical implementation of the
modernization program. “We want to ensure the
systems are safe for people and the environment
and that the production sites continue to run
smoothly,” the engineer added. Together with
his team he is modernizing the safety, control
and supply systems in particular, the electrical
and mechanical components of which are being
extended and improved.
Safely into the future
The new emergency power supply system from
MTU will provide energy for the most important
electrical equipment in the event of a mains
grid failure. The output of the backup gensets
previously installed had become inadequate. So
Statoil replaced the aging units with new ones.
In the summer of 2011, they were commissioned
by MTU engineers after successfully completing
a series of test runs. “We had already formed
a favorable impression of MTU from a previous
project. The price/performance ratio is fair,
the quality of the products is very good, and
the amount of experience that they have with
emergency power systems is very large,” said
Asbjørn Søndenå in explanation of Statoil’s
choice. “Apart from that, MTU was the only
bidder that met our specific demands in respect
of sound insulation.” And those specifications
were wide-ranging.
«The MTU price/performance ratio is fair, the quality of the
products is very good, and the amount of experience they have
with emergency power systems is large. »
Asbjørn Søndenå, Statoil
North Sea
Bergen
Norway
Tysvær
Oslo
Sweden
Italy
Finland
Noise level below 104 decibels
The gensets had to operate extremely quietly.
The health and safety regulations at Statoil
require that the noise of the generators must
not be louder than 104 decibels (dB(A)) at a
distance of one meter. That is roughly equivalent
to the volume of sound you would experience
on the ground from a jet airliner flying overhead
at an altitude of 300 meters. To make things
more difficult, that sound limit had to be
satisfied without substantially increasing the
cost of the installation. And that was a major
challenge because the most obvious solution
– building a soundproof enclosure around the
generators – was out of the question. It would
have made access to the engines for servicing
more difficult. So MTU engineers came up with
an alternative solution. They reduced the air
induction noise of the turbocharger by means
of special supplementary silencers. In addition,
a soundproofed generator housing muffles the
air intake and outlet noise. The result is that the
noise from the generators is only between 100.7
and 102.6 decibels at a distance of one meter.
The emergency power system
If there is a mains power failure, the system
supplies all essential emergency equipment
with electricity. That includes fire-extinguishing
systems, emergency lighting, battery chargers
for uninterruptible power supplies, and HVAC
systems that maintain positive air pressure in
buildings in potentially explosive atmosphere
zones. But auxiliary equipment such as lubrication
pumps, cooling systems for compressors, and
motorized valves also has to be kept working if
the grid goes down.
A new generator house built by Statoil according
to MTU specifications is the new home for the
MTU gensets. Inside it are the five MTU Type 16V
4000 G63 generator engines. Four of them are
enough to supply the energy required to run the
entire facility in emergency mode after a power
outage so that critical systems can be safely shut
down. The fifth unit serves as a reserve system.
Each of the gensets has a connected load
capacity of 2,338kVA and an electrical output of
1,870kW at a frequency of 50Hz and a voltage of
69V. In total, therefore, the four gensets deliver
an electrical output of just under 8 MW – enough
energy to cover the power requirements of a
small European town.
MTU supplied the gensets complete with
baseframes and resilient mountings and
all necessary system components such as
switchgear, fuel tanks and ventilation systems.
Five flatbed radiators with very low noise levels
mounted on the roof of the generator house
were also supplied by MTU. Exhaust silencers
make sure that as little noise as possible escapes
through the exhaust system – which guarantees
that the noise levels outside the building are
extremely low as well.
Ten seconds to load take-up
The fuel for the gensets is stored in two special
tanks supplied by MTU. If the mains power fails,
they contain enough fuel to keep four gensets
running at full power for up to 17 hours. MTU
also supplied the control systems that monitor
the emergency power systems and electricity
infeed. They issue the start-up command for
the emergency backup gensets if there is a
grid outage – and they react very quickly. The
Norwegian operators demanded that the gensets
had to be able to reach their rated output within
15 to 20 seconds. So they are up and running
within ten seconds and operating at full power
inside a further ten seconds – doing their job
quietly and reliably so that the gas never stops
flowing from the middle of nowhere in Norway.
Words: Katrin Beck
Pictures: Øyvind Hagen/Statoil
To find out more, contact:
Jörg Habermaas
Joerg.habermaas@mtu-online.com
Tel. +49 7541 90-4850