Coleman Microtunnelling and Herrenknecht’s 2,700 GWh per year capacity of Kpone Independent Power Plant (KIPP) is set to supply approximately one million households with electricity in Ghana
In late July 2017, Coleman Microtunnelling, a subsidiary of Bothar Group Australia, successfully completed tunnelling for two power plant cooling water lines in Ghana with a Herrenknecht utility tunnelling machine. The new oil-gas power plant puts the supply of electricity for people and business for the country on the West African Atlantic coast on a more solid foundation.
In the operation of the oil-gas power plant located about 25 kilometres east of the Ghanaian capital Accra directly on the coast, it will be cooled with sea water from the Atlantic Ocean via two cooling water lines.
For the construction of these underground seawater intake and outfall tunnels, Coleman Microtunnelling ordered a Herrenknecht AVND2000AB utility tunnelling machine. Herrenknecht specially designed the tunnel boring machine with a salvage module for this special application: In the sea-outfall method, pipelines are constructed from the coastline into the open sea. There, the machine has to be recovered under water.
The salvage module prevents the machine and the tunnel from flooding. In addition, for cutter tool changes under high groundwater pressure Herrenknecht equipped the machine with a hyperbaric chamber.
Swen Weiner, area sales executive for the Middle East for the Herrenknecht Business Unit Utility Tunnelling, said, “The good project performance for the long sea-outfall drive in Kpone will be a benchmark for the future in the region.”
The supply of another Herrenknecht machine to the Bothar Group for a next sea-outfall drive in Ghana followed almost seamlessly.
