No Rest for Turbine Move

By Thomas Timlen

Jetty limitations, port restrictions, space-constrained villages and seasonal weather complications all challenged deugro’s move of 80,000 freight tons of cargo for a 1.76-gigawatt combined-cycle gas turbine power plant project in Indonesia.

Everything about this project was big, starting with Indonesia’s commitment “to produce clean and affordable energy to support the country’s economic development,” as Nicke Widyawati, president director of PT Pertamina (Persero) power company, stated during the Jawa 1 combined-cycle power plant ground-breaking ceremony in December 2018.

The combined-cycle plant is the biggest of its kind in Southeast Asia and is part of the Indonesian government’s 35 GW electrification program, producing 1.76 GW, enough to power 11 million homes throughout the country.

A big plant incorporates big components. Among those needed were two 438-tonne gas turbine 9HA.02 units produced at General Electric’s plant in Belfort, France, that were shipped out of Antwerp along with two 460-tonne generator stator units and 54-tonne steam turbines.

In addition, 52 heat recovery steam generators with lengths of 30 meters and weights of up to 240 tonnes needed to be shipped from Haiphong, while casings were transported from Dung Quat, both Vietnamese ports.


Capacity Challenges

Samsung C&T procured the US$900 million engineering, procurement and construction contract for the Jawa 1 plant in consortium with GE and PT Meindo Elang Indah. The power plant project has a total investment of US$1.8 billion and involves more than 20 domestic and international companies.

Once the initial infrastructure phases were complete, the consortium turned to managing the transport of the oversized heavy-lift components, with a delivery window at the remote project site that ranged from December 2019 to February 2021.

The transport presented several challenges. The project site in West Cilamaya, about 80 kilometers east of Tanjung Priok and 7 kilometers inland, was not served by major roads, and the site jetty in West Cilamaya had limited capacity, only able to facilitate one barge at a time. Only the smaller components that fell within the maximum dimensions and weight as determined by preparatory surveys could be moved from Tanjung Priok to the project site by road. Although these components were smaller than those moved by barges, careful planning was still required as the winding road passed through several space-limited villages.

A lack of storage availability at the Port of Tanjung Priok required that most components had to be directly discharged onto barges for the 100-nautical-mile sea voyage to the project site jetty. This direct discharge to the barges did, however, create advantages at Tanjung Priok in the form of significant cost and time savings, as well as risk mitigation, since double-handling, storage in the port and reloading onto barges were all avoided.

Once at the jetty, all oversize heavy-lift components then had to be moved on a 7-kilometer purpose-built road between the jetty and the construction site. The road had a ground-bearing capacity of 4.8 tonnes.

Prioritizing safe operations – such as nighttime restrictions, the tide window at the jetty for roll-off from barge, road availability and site arrival planning – once safely on land a turbine that was discharged in the morning could arrive at the job site by the afternoon.


Direct Discharge

Complicating matters further, the operations faced challenges created by the continuously changing weather conditions during the rainy season. Yet, in spite of these daunting challenges, deugro and its partner companies completed the task on time. Key deugro team members explained to Breakbulk how these challenges were overcome.

“There were several operational challenges for this project, given its location with an infrastructure that was mainly not well-established,” said Daniel Wolfenstetter, customer solutions analyst, deugro Singapore, who served as business development manager for deugro Indonesia during the execution of the project.

“For the discharging of the heavy cargo, such as the gas turbines from a geared heavy-lift vessel at the Port of Tanjung Priok, the only suitable option was to discharge directly from the vessel onto barges, because the port infrastructure did not allow discharging and reloading at the port. So, barges for these super-heavy operations had to be arranged well in advance to match with vessel actual time of arrival, so that direct discharging could take place upon arrival without waiting.

“Furthermore, as there were several barges operating simultaneously between Tanjung Priok and the job site’s jetty, the barge movements and jetty discharging operations had to be well planned and scheduled in order to avoid barge congestion at the jetty, while allowing cargo to be discharged in accordance with the required site delivery schedule.

In line with this concept, and the jetty’s limitations, a vessel arrival schedule was developed, matching the vessel sequence and arrival dates with barge and jetty availability to ensure that a barge was always ready upon vessel arrival at Tanjung Priok.

The barges were prepared with all the necessary equipment to receive the cargo, including stools, beams, steel plates for load spreading, and notch wedges. Precise planning as well as barge- and cargo-specific designs for the load spreading were required to stay within the technical capacities of the locally available barges. To distribute the loads to the strong points of the barge deck, load spreading was applied according to dteq’s calculations to meet the permissible deck load of the barge.


Mitigating Weather Risks

Wolfenstetter noted that all the planning took into consideration the risk of unpredictable weather conditions, as the beginning and end of the project deliveries took place during the rainy season. “This meant that it was important to have a plan that included contingency and allowed timely arrival while ensuring the safety of the cargo at all times.”

To plan around the regularly changing weather, deugro looked to several sources, including data from the official Indonesia meteorological, climatological and geophysical agency BMKG. Prior to the commencement of the transport, all weather limitations were considered and fully incorporated into the method statement and risk assessment. The limitations posed by the elements had a significant influence on the grillage and sea-fastening design and on the complete barge shuttling concept.

deugro’s scope started with receiving the cargo under-hook at Tanjung Priok, clarified Wolfenstetter. “Hence, weather planning had to be performed well in advance for barge mobilizations and actual cargo moves.”

And then there was the pandemic, as Wolfenstetter noted: “The Covid-19 pandemic started shortly after the first project deliveries, which meant that continuity had to be ensured for all transports to be in line with the site, government and deugro Covid-19 rules. Due to the quick implementation of additional safety measures on all ends, transports could be continued without any delays.”

Having managed the challenges created by the pandemic, deugro was fortunate to avoid the unforeseen consequences created by the Ever Given blocking the Suez Canal, as the last cargo for the project under deugro’s scope was delivered by February 2021, only a month before the Suez Canal blockage in March 2021.


Early Preparations Essential

The success of the project being completed on time can be attributed to many efforts made long before it got started. Niels Meldau, president of dteq, a company of the deugro group, Germany, explained: “Due to the challenging infrastructure of the West Cilamaya jetty, as well as the ground conditions on the subsequent route to the site, various analyses, studies and simulations were required to identify and prepare suitable equipment combinations to ensure smooth, safe and on-schedule operations.”

“The comprehensive method statements included stowage, grillage, a sea-fastening design and ballasting plan, motion analysis and mooring calculations, as well as the complete trailer set-up and configuration.” dteq created the design for the sea-fastening on the accelerations derived from the stowage-specific motion analysis. The motions for the barge transport were calculated based on the DNVGL ST-N-001 standard considering the criteria of weather-restricted operations, whereby departure was limited to a maximum of Beaufort 5.

In Meldau’s view, the biggest challenge was to adopt the technical solutions to deal with the dynamic logistics challenges to meet schedule demands without an intermediate laydown area. “Mutual understanding, open communication and solution-orientated thinking made it possible to develop safe and efficient solutions.”

Video of this move is available here.

Thomas Timlen is a Singapore-based analyst, researcher, writer and spokesperson with 31 years of experience addressing the regulatory and operational issues that impact all sectors of the maritime industry.

Photo 1: A gas turbine traveling 7 kilometers on the purpose-built road to the construction site. CREDIT: deugro

Phote 2: Daniel Wolfenstetter, customer solutions analyst, deugro Singapore

Photo 3: The heavy cargo had to be discharged directly from the vessel onto barges at the port because of infrastructure limitations. CREDIT: deugro

Photo 4: Casings in transport from the jetty to the job site. CREDIT: deugro GROUP

Photo 5: Niels Meldau, president, dteq