POWER October 2020 - 30

TOP PLANT
The 470-MW Floating Powership
That Buoyed Ghana
Courtesy: Karpowership
Karpowership's 470-MW floating power plant deployed at two locations in
Ghana demonstrated how robust an impact the innovative " plug-and-play "
electricity delivery model can have on a power-hungry country's economy and
society.
Sonal Patel
Z
eynep Harezi, chief commercial officer
of Karpowership, recalls a poignant
moment around mid-August
2019, as the Karadeniz Powership Osman
Khan prepared to set sail from a fishing
village at Tema, on the eastern coast of
Ghana, to the Sekondi Naval Base near
Takoradi, about 300 kilometers to the
south. Tema had been the first destination
for the Osman Khan, which had only
been completed and launched in 2017 as
the largest Powership in Karpowership's
fleet. At 300-meters(m)-long, and 50-mwide
(Figure 1), it had towered for two
years in a harbor that fishermen had traditionally
used to dock their wooden canoes,
supplying 450 MW, or about 26%
of Ghana's generated power, with heavy
fuel oil (HFO).
Before the Osman Khan arrived at
Tema, Karpowership had sent the much
smaller 235-MW Aysegül Sultan in 2015
to initiate a 10-year, 450-MW power purchase
agreement (PPA) that Karpowership,
a global subsidiary of Istanbul,
Turkey-based Karadeniz Energy Group,
signed with the Electricity Co. of Ghana
(ECG) in June 2014, Harezi explained. " At
first we felt like an unwelcome guest, "
because the vessel occupied a prime
spot at the busy Tema harbor where the
fishermen earned their daily catch, she
said. But the benefits of a steady supply
of power quickly began to transform
30
industry in the region that lies east of
Ghana's capital Accra. For the residents
at Tema, the threat of unpredictable
outages-which they had suffered frequently,
and at times for more than 24
hours-was suddenly vanquished, and
they could now use refrigerant systems
to attract bulk buyers for their fish.
And though Karpowership's model is
mobile, like stationary power plant developers
around the world, the company did
all it could to garner community support.
" We gathered community meetings and
asked them what they needed, " said
Harezi. " They needed fishing nets, water
tanks [for fresh water], fishing mesh,
fridges. We donated new bathrooms to
all the local schools, a library, a computer
lab, and since the beginning of our operations,
scholarships to hundreds of
kids, " she said. " It was such a wonderful
relationship. The whole community, ultimately,
was sad that we were leaving. "
An Innovative 'Plug-and-Play'
Model
The Ghanaian project was Karpowership's
first in Africa, but it marked a pivotal milestone
for the company, which only began
its innovative floating power supply model
in 2010. The 1948-established Karadeniz Energy
Group has forayed into energy markets
since 1996 with its first land-based power
plant located in southern Turkey. In 2003,
when it became the first private electricity
www.powermag.com
exporter in Turkey, Karpowership's first Powership
opportunity emerged from a crossborder
export agreement Karadeniz signed
with Iraq, said Harezi.
" We had already been approached by
various mining companies in Africa who
wanted us to build land-based power
plants for them. And we told them, 'Instead
of building plants in these remote
locations, let us build them on ships inside
bunkers and sell them to you,' " she
said. So even though the first Powership
was destined for Africa, after the first
Karpowership went to Basra in southern
Iraq, it was followed by dispatches to
Lebanon, and then Pakistan.
The 450-MW PPA with Ghana's government
in 2014 was a " breakthrough "
that demonstrated the model's robustness,
as well as its powerful economic
and societal impact for power-hungry developing
countries, Harezi said. To date,
Karpowership has completed 25 Powerships
and deployed 21 of them, a total
capacity that exceeds 4.1 GW. An additional
4.4 GW are either under construction
or in the pipeline.
Among the deployed fleet are Powerships
that supply between 10% and 80%
of all generation on the Indonesian islands
of Medan, North Sulawesi, East Nusa Teneggara,
and Ambon, and 10% of Cuba.
Since Ghana, notably, Karpowership has
deployed eight Powerships to Africa. It
also supplied electricity to Zambia, a landPOWER
| October 2020
http://www.powermag.com
POWER October 2020

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