KARPOWER TO PRODUCE MORE POWER

The Karpower ship

By Duke Tagoe

Following its successful generation of 225Mw of electricity into the national grid, the Karpowerplant Company Limited is ready to deliver a second power ship with installed capacity of 450Mw.

The power ship to be delivered by the second quarter of this year is 70% complete and will produce an additional 225Mw power to augment what is currently produced by the company in accordance with the Power Purchase Agreement it signed with the Electricity Company of Ghana (ECG) on the 5^th of June 2014.

The Karpowerplant at Tema is currently supplying more than 1.7 million households with stable power supply accounting for 22% of Ghana’s total energy needs.

The Power Purchase Agreement between the ECG and their Turkish counterparts became effective on the 24^th of August 2014 following the latter’s acceptance of tariffs it negotiated with the Public Utility Regulatory Commission.

Fuel supply for Power ship

Although the power ship first received a first few batches of fuel from Rotterdam, Vitol and Trafigoura, the Ghana National Petroleum Corporation (GNPC) currently provides all the Heavy Fuel Oil (HFO) needs of the karpowerplant.

Patrick O’ Driscoll, Sales Director of Karpower Company Limited said GNPC was chosen in November 2015 as the fuel provider for the power ship because it was the only recognized national oil company of Ghana with the ability to put together the most competitive and structured agreement for quality fuel supply with better terms against security.

“Our fuel supplies could have been ENI, Shell, BP, Trafigoura or Momjasa but the GNPC stood out as the best and we are satisfied with the collaboration and the work they have done so far,” he said.

Sankofa Gas And The Karpower Ship

Per the contract signed with Ghana, the power ship will first run on HFO for 5 years and later switch to natural gas most likely from the Sankofa Gas Project.

According to Zeynep Harezi, Executive Director of Business Development of Karpower, the engines of the power ships are constructed to run on both fuel and gas, but at better efficiency with gas at a low cost. However, given the low prices of HFO on the market, the company believes that it is cheaper to operate on heavy fuel oil than on natural gas even when they are readily available adding that the company could choose to keep running on HFO after the 5^th year if the prices continue to remain low.

The Executive Director also stated that although the contract between the company and the ECG will come to an end in 10 years, the powership will not immediately leave the shores of Ghana as it was still open to negotiation about the extension of the contract with the ECG including an expansion of generation capacity.

Ownership of the power ship

At the end of 10 years, the Karpower Company Limited says it will not be in the best interest of Ghana to own or purchase the power ship. According to them, the country would find it difficult to obtain the needed spare parts for maintenance of the ship.

“Any time a country needs spare parts, they need to go out to tender and the purchasing regulations also presents a challenge very often, but because our business is power generation, we purchase the parts in many quantities and because we have nine power ships in operation across the world, we have an international spare parts and maintenance up keep team which no utility can compete with, and we are able to maintain the power ships at high efficiency and at the lowest cost” Zeynep Harezi said.

Support to the Tema Township

As part of their corporate social responsibility, the Karpower company limited has distributed thousands of textbooks, computers and other educational materials to community schools in Tema and its immediate environs.

The company has also distributed high quality fishing nets to hundreds of fishermen and boat owners with another plan to put young men and women in vocational and engineering training.

The power ship has the state-of-the-art technology to desalinate sea water and has the capacity to produce more than 12 thousand meter cube of water per day for use by the power ship and a reasonable number of communities around the ship.