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How to build a giant: GE starts up massive mobile power plant for Chevron’s big gas project

April 29, 2015
Five hundred years ago, Michelangelo fashioned David from marble cut out of the mountains towering over the Tuscan town of Carrara. Today, however, the area’s craftsmen are in the business of making Goliaths.
Adjacent to Carrara are the towns Avenza and Massa, the home of two huge plants and testing fields where GE’s Oil & Gas business builds some of the world’s largest industrial equipment, including five gas turbine generators for the Chevron-operated Gorgon Project, one of the world’s largest natural gas developments located off the coast of Western Australia.

The first module just started generating electricity on Australia’s Barrow Island, as the project moves ever closer to producing gas.

/><br /> <br /> <em>The loading jetty. Image credit: Chevron</em><br /> <br /> Barrow Island, for example, is classified as a <a href=“Class A” nature reserve with 378 kinds of native plants, 13 types of mammals and 43 reptiles. As a result, GE workers in Italy had to adhere to a strict quarantine management plan to comply with Gorgon Project and Australian Quarantine requirements while building the modules.

To prevent soil, plant and wildlife contamination, workers had to walk through pressurized air cabins to clean their clothes every time they entered the construction lot. An automatic system washed the soles of their shoes. No food or drink with the exception of bottled water was allowed inside.

/><br /> <br /> <em>Building the massive, 2,300-ton modules was not the only challenge. When they were finished, the company had to move them through Avenza’s streets to port, and load them onto a ship.</em><br /> <br /> It took the first module 4.5 hours to cover the 500-yard distance between the GE plant and the Marina di Carrara port. The goliath rolled, like a centipede, on 578 computerized wheels attached to four orange self-propelled transporters (<em>see above</em>). At one tight point, the module slid so close past a residential complex that a quarter would have gotten stuck between the structures, GE says.<br /> <br /> GE also had to triple the size of the Avenza plant to more 140,000 square meters (a quarter of the National Mall in Washington, D.C.), to accommodate the structures.<br /> <br /> “We are in the midst of an exciting period for the Australian LNG industry, developing, commissioning and starting-up major projects across the country,” said Mary Hackett, the GE Oil & Gas regional director for Australia, New Zealand and Papua New Guinea. “Our technology is pivotal in all these projects and to helping Australia develop into a world class, and possibly the biggest, LNG exporter.”<br /> <br /> It looks like this goliath is a winner.<br /> <br /> <em>Top image: The first power module arrives on Barrow Island in Western Australia. Above: </em><br /> <br /> <em>This story orginally appeared on <a href=GEreports.com.