Sarulla Geothermal Power Plant

closed

The world’s largest single-contract geothermal power plant lightens IndonesiaIndonesia is home to 40 percent of the world’s geothermal reserves and the third-biggest producer in the globe. In the Sarulla region of the country, Hyundai E&C completed its first and the world’s largest single-contract geothermal power plant in May.The Sarulla geothermal power project aimed to build three units of approximately 110MW each including SIL, NIL-1 and NIL-2 in North Sumatra. The Sarulla power plant has a full capacity of 330MW, enough to power 210,000 local households, making it the biggest single-contract geothermal power plant in the world.The Hyundai E&C-led consortium won the turnkey-based contract under which the builder performed the entire process ranging from designing and construction to commissioning. The Sarulla geothermal power project valued at 705 million dollars kickstarted in May 2014. It took 47months to complete in May 2018.One of key equipments of the project was the Ormat Energy Converter(OEC) for which two air cooled condensers(ACCs) were required to be installed. In general, a large-scale crane is used to build two condensers at the same time, but the construction site’s circumstances did not allow. To address the problem, the construction site made a drastic change in the construction method. They mobilized several small- and medium-sized cranes to install one ACC after another, which led to minimizing interferences among construction fields, improving productivity and thereby reducing the construction period by one month.The construction site has been on alert owing to poor infrastructure, especially including deteriorated road conditions. To move heavy-weight materials, the construction site paid a number of visits to conduct a simulation and select optimal travel routes. Moreover, the workers continued to check the transportation paths to gear up for emergencies resulting from landslides, earthquakes and rainfall. Another obstacle facing the construction site was rain. Due to Indonesia’s tropical forest climate, they had to deal with heavy tropical rain almost once a day. Heavy rainfall got worse throughout the rainy season between September and next March, which had significant consequences on the construction work.The world is paying close attention to power generation using clean energies such as geothermal heat and wind and solar power, instead of fossil fuels. Among them, unlike solar and wind energy, geothermal power is not influenced by weather conditions. Those working at the construction site showed strong pride and willingness to win more contracts in Indonesia, adding that the successful completion of the world’s largest single-contract geothermal power project would lay the stepping stones for Hyundai E&C to dominate the country’s geothermal power market.

High