Wartsila Inks Cambodia Power Plant Sale
Finnish technology group Wartsila is to supply a 200-MW flexible baseload power plant to Cambodia that will help meet the country’s rapidly growing energy demand, it said July 1. Because of the urgent need to increase electricity supply, it is on a fast-track basis.
The order was placed in June 2019 by CGGC-UN Power Co, the Chinese state-owned main EPC contractor for the power plant project. The plant, in Kandal Province near Phnom Penh is being built on behalf of Cambodia’s state-owned utility Electricite du Cambodge (EDC) and is expected to become fully operational in 2020. It is the first such plant that CGGC-UN will own in Cambodia.
In addition to adding much needed capacity to the grid, the high efficiency 50DF dual-fuel engines will provide the fast-starting, balancing flexibility to improve grid stability and reliability and also increased levels of renewable energy, in particular solar power, to be eventually integrated into the system. The dual-fuel capability will allow them to initially operate on heavy fuel oil and to switch to LNG when the local LNG infrastructure is available.
”This is our first thermal power plant installation in Cambodia, and we greatly appreciate the support from Wärtsilä in delivering their generating equipment with such a short lead time. This will allow the project to be completed by next year, so that the needed electricity supply can come on-line as planned,” commented CGGC-UN Power president, Liu Fei.
Wartsila's head of business development in Cambodia Thanh Pham said that the fuel and operational flexibility were "key factors in delivering the right solution for this project. The ability to seamlessly switch to LNG fuel when it becomes available is made possible by the Wartsila 50DF engines. They also have the flexibility to operate at lower load during the rainy season, and the flexibility to integrate renewables into the system in the future, although the immediate use will be to provide the required baseload power.”
Cambodia has considerable potential for utilising solar energy and Wartsila’s energy solutions are aimed at facilitating the adoption of renewables.