POWER March 2015 - 8

Cambodia's Largest
Hydropower Plant Begins
Operation
The 338-MW Russey Chrum Krom hydropower
plant in southwestern Koh Kong
province, Cambodia, was inaugurated on
Jan. 12. The Chinese-built project is the
largest hydropower station located in the
Southeast Asian country of more that 15
million people.
The dam was constructed by China Huadian
Corp. at a cost of about $500 million
under a 35-year build-operate-transfer
contract with the Cambodian government.
The first five years of the contract were
designed to accommodate construction,
which officially began on Apr. 1, 2010. It
is the largest investment China Huadian
has made in Cambodia.
The hydropower facility comprises an
upper and a lower station. The upperstation
dam was completed on Dec. 28,
2010. The lower portion was completed in
June 2013 and began to impound water
on Dec. 13, 2013. The upper dam's generation
capacity is 206 MW, while the lower
dam contributes 132 MW to the total.
Cambodia is in desperate need of reliable
power. According to The World Bank,
electricity cost and access is a key constraint
to further growth of the country's
manufacturing sector. Even so, Cambodia's
average annual growth rate was 7.7% during
the past two decades, making it the
sixth-fastest growing country in the world
during the period.
The Cambodian Ministry of Industry,
Mining, and Energy (MIME), forecasts
power demand will more than double by
2020. While that sounds daunting, with a
current nationwide capacity of only 1,072
MW, adding a plant the size of Russey
1. Cambodian Prime Minister Hun
Sen cuts the ribbon. The Russey Chrum
Krom inauguration ceremony included several
dignitaries and company executives. Courtesy:
Samdech Hun Sen, Cambodian Prime
Minister
Chrum Krom goes a long way toward meeting
new demand requirements.
MIME's electricity supply development
plan depends upon the construction of
four more hydropower projects (totaling
1,326 MW) and three coal-fired power
plants (totaling 1,235 MW) to accommodate
growth to 2020 and beyond. While
some estimates have pegged Cambodia's
theoretical hydropower potential to be
greater than 10,000 MW, prior to 2002 virtually
none of it had been developed.
Since 2002, five hydropower stations
have been added, and a sixth is expected
to come online soon. The operational
sites are: Kirirom 1 (12 MW), Kirirom 3
(18 MW), Stung Atai (120 MW), Kamchay
(194.1 MW), and Russey Chrum Krom (338
MW). The 246-MW Stung Tatai station is
said to be complete and will be put into
service later this year.
In addition to generation from the hydropower
plants, Cambodia imports power
from Vietnam (170 MW) and Thailand (120
MW). It also gets power from two 50-MW
coal-fired units at the Sihanoukville project,
which came online in January 2014.
But just adding capacity is not enough.
Cambodia currently lacks the transmission
and distribution infrastructure to get the
electricity where it needs to go. Although
the Russey Chrum Krom hydropower plant
is technically a 338-MW facility, The Cambodia
Daily reports that its current output
is only about 5% due to its inability to
transmit the power outside of the provincial
town.
In time, Cambodian Prime Minister
Hun Sen-who was on hand for the inauguration
ceremony (Figure 1)-says the
transmission network will be in place to
distribute the dam's power nationally, but
that could take years.
-Aaron Larson
U.S., Netherlands
Harness Waste Gases for
Distributed Generation
Methane emissions are garnering increasing
attention because of their potential
impact on the climate. Though far less
methane is released to the atmosphere
than carbon dioxide, methane has 20 to 25
times the potential warming effect. That's
spurred regulatory attention, highlighted
by the January announcement from the
Obama administration that it would roll
out a series of initiatives designed to sub8
www.powermag.com
stantially
cut methane emissions from the
oil and gas industry.
But methane emissions are a problem
beyond oil and gas production, as the gas
is generated by a wide variety of industrial
and agricultural processes. Because these
emissions are typically impure, mixed with
other gases such as oxygen and carbon
dioxide, their low Btu value can make capturing
and using them uneconomic. Even
where there are economic incentives, such
as in associated gas production from oil
wells, the lack of gathering infrastructure
can lead to the waste gases being flared
or simply released to the atmosphere.
A variety of approaches are available to
convert such waste gases to power, but
they can come with additional challenges,
such as generating harmful emissions of
their own. In addition, they do not work
with all types of waste gas.
Irvine, Calif.-based company Ener-Core
believes it has a technology to harness
these waste gases for power generation
while producing far lower emissions. Rather
than combusting the gases in a turbine or
reciprocating engine, the company's FP250
Powerstation employs an oxidizer that produces
useful heat energy but does it at low
enough temperatures to avoid producing
harmful pollutants such as NOx
(Figure 2).
The output from the oxidizer is then fed
into a 250-kW gas turbine generator.
The use of oxidizer technology allows
the FP250 to accept a much wider range
of fuel qualities, including very low-Btu
POWER | March 2015
2. Waste to power. Ener-Core's FP250
system is capable of generating 250 kW from
very low-Btu waste gases that might otherwise
be flared or vented. This system is installed
at the Fort Benning U.S. Army base in
Georgia. Courtesy: Ener-Core
http://www.powermag.com
POWER March 2015

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