Overview
McDowall Affleck was appointed by EPC Contractor NuEnergy to provide Structural Engineering Services for the Junction Road Gas Power Station in New Plymouth (NZ) for their end client Todd Energy. The plant consists of a 120 MW Open Cycle Gas Turbine Power Station using two GE LM6000 Gas Turbines and associated balance of plant. McDowall Affleck and Italian partner Studio Techne’ coordinated the geotechnical investigation and provided an optimized design for the two GE LM6000 Gas turbines, based on an advanced dynamic analysis which considered the soil-structure interaction.
Type of Engineering Work – Structural Engineering – Energy
Work Timeframe – February 2019 to June 2019
Contract Value – Approx $80 million
McDowall Affleck Contact – Alberto Puccini
Scope of Work
- Coordination of geotechnical investigation.
- Design optimisation of LM6000 gas turbine foundations.
- Design of foundations for balance of plant.
Project Challenges
- Preliminary design of LM6000 foundation by others significantly exceeded budget
- Fast track program requiring staged delivery
- Inadequate input from equipment supplier requiring several iterations
- Inadequate geotechnical input for dynamic analysis which required additional investigation
How we managed this
- Working closely with NuEnergy to obtain required data to commence design (geotechnical parameters and input from equipment manufacturers)
- Initial preliminary analysis of the LM6000 foundations based on optimized dimensions as per previous designs;
- Comprehensive dynamic analysis including soil structure intergration allowed optimising the foundation
Value Engineering
- Concrete volume of optimised foundations for both LM6000 gas turbines is approximately 300 cubic meter less than the initial design by others.
