Eni Bhit Gas Field is located 180 km north of Karachi in the Kirthar region of Pakistan. The gas field forms the boundary between the lower Indus plain to the east and Baluchistan to the west. The region receives a favorable sun irradiation through most of the year.
Eni, through its’ subsidiary Eni New Energy Pakistan, partnered with Reon on the 10 MW Solar Power Plant to reduce the employment of gas-fired power turbines by partially shifting the load to Solar Energy, and subsequently reducing carbon emissions.
The single-axis Solar PV plant (42 panels on a single array) has improved the annual energy generation capacity by 15% as compared to a traditional PV plant. The Solar plant created approximately 440 jobs (150 from the local community) during construction and 14 permanent skilled and semi-skilled jobs.
Design and Execution
The start-up was achieved within 6 months of the Final Investment Decision (FID) out of which the on-ground installation time frame was of 60 days. This was done so to achieve the Plant synchronization with the gas turbines during Eni annual maintenance shutdown of Oct 2019 (the next shutdown was then expected in April 2020).
The Plant has been divided into 4 chunks of 2.5 MW and the energy evacuated is fed into the Eni grid. This is the first such synchronization at 11 kva in the gas upstream sector in Pakistan.
The photovoltaic plant works in full zeal with the existing power generation system of Bhit gas treatment plant, optimizing operational costs with the shutdown of one of the existing gas turbines.
The article was originally published on Reon Energy – Eni New Energy Pakistan