Qatar Petroleum is responsible for all stages of the oil and gas industry in Qatar. Over the past few years, Qatar has continued to move towards becoming a world leader in the production and export of Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG), playing a significant role in the country’s growing GDP. The industrial city of Ras Laffan is a key location for the majority of Qatar Petroleum’s operations and is situated to the north-east of Doha, covering an area of 106 square kilometres. Operated by a management team appointed by Qatar Petroleum, the city is home to one of the world’s largest LNG export ports and to many major industrial facilities. The port facility has an enormous LNG export capacity of 30 million metric tonnes per year and supplies LNG to the United Kingdom and other European destinations via its fleet of gas container vessels.
Ras Laffan City (RLC) is continually developing to keep pace with the growing global demand for its products, and, under a recently completed project, new accommodation and office blocks have been brought into service. Continuous power is provided by two container-type Endcape generating sets with a total output of 1 MW, each managed by a DSE load sharing control module. The generating sets were required to run individually for 12 hours each, with a seamless changeover at the end of each period, in order to provide an uninterrupted power supply.
The multi-set control modules automatically control the synchronisation, changeover, starting and stopping procedures of the generating sets; they also monitor load demand and, during moments of high peak usage, bring the resting generator on line to run in parallel with the other. This two-set system also protects the accommodation and office facility against loss of power. In the event of an engine failure on one of the generating sets, the second generator starts and takes the load. The load sharing control modules also provide comprehensive engine and power monitoring and control via the front panel displays. This gives maintenance teams easy access to system status, advanced event logs and power metering information.
DSE sent a Customer Support Engineer to RLC to assist with the commissioning process, and the system has operated exactly as intended from the very first day.
