KOGAN CREEK POWER STATION
Commencing commercial operation in late 2007 the 750 Megawatt Kogan Creek Power Station is Australia’s largest power station and is located west of Chinchilla Queensland. Built by joint venture partners Siemens and Hitachi for CS Energy the facility has the largest single boiler, turbine and generator unit in the country and will produce enough electricity to power one million homes.
Kogan Creek Power Station features supercritical boiler technology, which means that steam is produced at a higher pressure and temperature compared to a conventional subcritical boiler design used in many power stations in Australia.
The air-cooling technology used at the power station results in 90 per cent less water use than a conventional wet-cooled power station.
Climate control for the operations and computer centre for the safe operation of the generator must be guaranteed for the plant to operate safely, the original design utilised three 500kw chillers made specifically for the power station as triple redundancy of supply and computerised control systems to manage all possible fault situations and continue to supply cooling to keep the generator on line.
The Kogan Creek Power Station Boiler house is 70 meters high.
Problems surfaced almost immediately with the climate control system and continued to beset the operation, multiple chiller failures, control system failures and unresolved system design concerns.
FRR service personnel met with Siemens engineers reviewing the plant and operation identifying many areas of concern. An engineered plan was presented and subsequently accepted by Siemens and CS Energy.
Three new TRANE 500kw screw chillers and a DELTA CONTROLS system, transformers and switchboards were installed as well as numerous modifications to the airflow management system incorporating an approved fire management protocol.
The project was required to be completed in 16 weeks and conditions to be maintained at all times, proving challenging to say the least.
Project completion was accomplished in 14 weeks with no disruption to the power stations operation.
