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GENERATION & WHOLESALE MARKETS
February/March 2014 • www.esb.ie/em
Constructing Carrington: helping power ESB's corporate strategy
John O'Connor, Carrington Programme Director, takes time out to speak with EM about how the exciting new electricity generation project being developed near Manchester is progressing. When completed, Carrington Power will generate enough electricity to supply the needs of approximately one million homes.
THEY SAY IT TAKES a village to raise a child, but in this case, the child is an 881MW gas-fired power station! So, perhaps a few more than a village - the Carrington Project is a real cross-team effort: many people across the ESB Group are lending their expertise to the project and I want to thank everyone for their hard work to date.
In order to coordinate that village to successfully and safely deliver Carrington, we're using ESB's Project Delivery Methodology (PDM). (For more on this: see Oct/Nov EM, page 16). Through the PDM, we have hit all of our key milestones so far, including:
- In December, sections of the stations boilers arrived via the Man chester Ship Canal. It was too unwieldy to travel by road, so transport by canal was the best and most sustainable option. (See the timelapse video on Solas of the equipment arriving onsite.)
- We completed pile driving in January. We've stabilised the ground by driving 3,073 20m-deep piles, 'threading’ them through 5,579 piles remaining from the old coalfired station. However, there were no accurate records of the old piles. So the ESB International team on site had to locate and digitally map them - a feat which is as impressive as the final total number of piles itself.
- The mechanical and electrical phase of construction is ready to start. Our contractors, a consortium of Alstom and Duro Felguera, are mobilised on site and the overall site numbers will tip over 800 during Q2.
- The ESB International site team is now well established under project manager Michael Mahon and site manager John McLoughlin.
- Our Operations and Maintenance (O&M) team have started mobilising and will begin training during summer 2014, with a view to launching station operations in 2016.
- The gas pipeline is substantially complete and charged with inert gas, ready to go into commission. This has significantly de-risked the project.
- And, finally, the GT26 turbine, which weighs around 400 tonnes (roughly the same as 74 male African elephants or two Boeing 777-300 jets), was also brought to the site by barge on 23 January 2014. The second gas turbine will be delivered later in Ql 2014.
CARRINGTON AS PART OF THE ESB STRATEGY
- Carrington is central to the ESB strategy to compete successfully in the energy market with a balanced, low carbon generation portfolio (so it will also help us meet our corporate and social responsibility goals).
- This flagship project will position us competitively when the Regional Electricity Market launches - covering the UK and Ireland.
- The project has been funded on a ring-fenced basis so that it doesn't displace any of our investment in electricity infrastructure on the island of Ireland.
