Wartsila Supplies 430-Megawatt Twin Unit for Barrick and Dominican Generator

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Written by Richard Finlayson, Senior International Editor for Industrial Info Resources (Sugar Land, Texas)--When 12 Wartsila (Helsinki, Finland) 50 DF generating sets are installed at the Quisqueya power plant complex in the Dominican Republic, the facility will be the largest power generating unit supplied by the company.

The turnkey contract for the Quisqueya II plant was awarded by Empresa de Electricidad Haina (EGE Haina), the country's largest power generation company, and will be identical to Quisqueya I at the same site. The contract is valued at $195 million.

Quisqueya I was ordered by Barrick Gold Corporation (NYSE:ABX) (Toronto, Canada) in September 2011, and although the two units have separate owners, both plants will be constructed at the same site and operate as a single unit that can be operated from one control room. The two power plants will have a total output of 430 megawatts.

The power plant is part of Barrick Gold's longer-term, optimized power solution for the mining operation at Pueblo Viejo, which is about 100 kilometers from the country's capital, Santo Domingo. Barrick's share in the plant investment is $180 million. More than 7.6 million tons of ore have been stockpiled at the mining site.

The power plant will commence operations using heavy fuel oil as a feed, but will have the ability to subsequently transition to lower cost liquid natural gas (LNG). The new plant is expected to provide lower cost, long-term power to the project.

The second unit is scheduled to be fully operational by the second half of 2013 and will supply base load power to the national grid.

The Wartsila Flexicycle solution combines the advantages of a simple-cycle plant with the high efficiency of a combined-cycle plant and can be optimized for different outputs ranging from 100 MW to 500 MW. The power plant is based on gas-fired combustion engines and a steam turbine combined cycle. Each engine is equipped with a heat recovery steam generator, and the power plant has one common steam turbine and condenser. The cooling is typically arranged so that the combustion engines are cooled with closed-loop radiators and the steam cycle with cooling towers.

EGE Hainan is owned 50% by the state and 50% by private investors and owns several power plants in the Dominican Republic, including a 150-MW barge-mounted power plant supplied by Wartsila. The company has a total of more than 1,100 MW of generating capacity in operation in the country.

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