Smooth refinery operations and high power plant efficiency in Pakistan

Wärtsilä received an order in June 2007 to supply and install a 160 MW power plant at the Attock Refinery Ltd site near Rawalpindi in Pakistan. The project took 15 months to complete and commercial operations were commenced at the end of 2008.


The customer is Attock Gen Ltd, a company with the specific purpose of owning and operating the power plant. The main owners within the Attock Oil Group, include Attock Refinery Ltd and Attock Oil Company.


WÄRTSILÄ SOLUTION
The order consists of nine Wärtsilä 18V46 type generating sets with heat recovery boilers on each, one 11.6 MWe steam turbine plant and a 132 kV switchyard. The plant is run on heavy fuel oil and will be connected to the national grid. With the combined cycle configuration at 100% load, an electrical net efficiency of 45% can be reached.


"This new power plant will enable smooth refinery operations as the sale of heavy fuel will be ensured and will provide relief to the common man and boost the economy of energy-starved Pakistan. We also wanted the highest possible power plant efficiency during a lifetime cycle of 25 years, which we believe Wärtsilä's combined cycle concept will be able to provide," says Mr M. Adil Khattak, Chief Executive Officer of Attock Gen Ltd.


Prior to this order, Wärtsilä has supplied a total of 860 MW of electrical power generation to Pakistan. “This latest order will mean that we have supplied power plants which produce more than 1 000 MW of electricity to Pakistan. Our strong local presence and successful track record in Pakistan combined with efficiency and flexibility of our solution were amongst the reasons we were awarded this contract,” says Mr Christoph Vitzthum, Group Vice President Wärtsilä Power Plants.


Wärtsilä was also awarded an Operations & Maintenance (O&M) agreement to operate and maintain the Attock Gen Ltd power plant.