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turbines, whenever possible.
The rst gas turbine was loaded
onto a ship in Norköping, Sweden.
The ship then travelled to the port of
Hamburg, Germany, where the gas
and steam turbine generators and
other auxiliaries for the gas turbine
were brought on board. The ship then
travelled to Arica, Chile, through the
Panama Canal. In Arica, the parts
were unloaded and trucked to each
project site.
With equipment arriving from sev-
eral countries, different ports of entry
had to be used, as a single port was not
large enough to handle all the cargo.
For the 22 boilers, each consisting of
two modules, a total of 44 boiler
modules were shipped from China to
the ports of Angamos and Arica,
Chile, and then transported on to the
project sites.
It took approximately ve to eight
weeks to ship the gas turbines by sea
from Sweden or Germany to the port
of Arica and then roughly four weeks
to transport them onward to the con-
struction sites.
With limitations on trucks capable
of transporting equipment, it was im-
possible to transport equipment to all
three sites in parallel. Deliveries were
therefore staggered to ship a maxi-
mum of four boilers at one time and
two gas turbines on one vessel.
The main challenge began when
equipment arrived in the country.
Landlocked Bolivia is the highest and
most isolated country in South
America. It has a varied terrain span-
ning the Andes Mountains, the Ataca-
ma Desert and Amazon Basin rainfor-
est. Much of the equipment had to be
navigated across the Andes at a height
of 4680 m.
Many challenges were encountered
at a number of points on the land
routes. Crossing bridges and rivers, as
well as coping with the rainy season,
were some of the key challenges
faced in implementing the project.
The constantly changing and often
extreme weather conditions along the
route (heat, snow, heavy rain, mud-
slides, ooding), presented a special
challenge.
“We had to cross different climatic
zones and the transport on the truck
itself was a huge effort,” said Koerber.
“Normally we try to keep truck trans-
port for heavy-lift equipment as short
as possible. But for this project, in
some instances we had to travel over
1800 km to reach a site with 100
heavy-lift cargoes.”
Transporting the boilers was partic-
ularly challenging. “They are very
large pieces of equipment, weighing
around 170 t. It required several
trucks to pull or push the weight over
the Andes,” said Koerber.
Some journeys involved crossing
50 bridges, with many requiring the
construction of temporary metal sup-
ports. In some cases, new roads had to
be built. “We did a study even before
the project began to make sure it was
all feasible,” said Koerber.
He added: “In South America, you
always need to have communication
with the local authorities. The rst
road may be ne but on the second
there may be a problem; and in Bo-
livia not all the roads are paved. We
needed to be exible to nd a new
road if necessary or change plan to
nd the best solution to get the equip-
ment to site in time.”
Entre Ríos provided a good example
of the adaptability of the logistics
team. Along the route to the plant,
there were two bridges that were too
high to be supported. The team there-
fore took the decision to transport the
six HRSGs from Chile to Bolivia by
aeroplane.
“We had to use the world’s biggest
cargo plane, the Antonov An-225, to
get the heavy equipment past these
bridges and to deliver what we prom-
ised to the customer,” said Koerber.
“We had 12 deliveries; it was a huge
effort.”
The rst gas turbines arrived at del
Sur in August 2017, four months after
leaving Sweden. The rst steam tur-
bine from Brazil also arrived in Au-
gust. There was approximately a
two-month stagger between the three
plants, with Warnes following two
months after del Sur and Entre Ríos,
two months after Warnes.
Erection began as soon as main
equipment began arriving at the sites.
At the peak of construction, there
were more than 1700 people deployed
across the three sites.
A major milestone was reached on
September 18, 2018 with rst re of
the rst two new gas turbines at Ter-
moeléctrica del Sur. Firing of the next
steam turbine. The fth of the existing
gas turbines at de Warnes will remain
in open cycle.
These two plants will also be cooled
differently. Due to its location in the
south of the country, where the condi-
tions are dry, Termoeléctrica del Sur
will use air-cooled condensers. As
Termoeléctrica de Warnes is in an
area where there are small rivers and
wells and rainfall is high, cooling
towers will be employed.
At Entre Ríos, the existing gas tur-
bines will all remain in open cycle.
The new equipment will be used to
build three new 2-on-1 combined cy-
cle blocks. With the availability of
sufcient cooling water, this plant
will also use cooling towers, which
allows slightly higher efciency than
air-cooled condensers.
The decision to keep some of the
gas turbines at the plant in open cycle
allowed each of the combined cycle
blocks to be designed identically. This
not only reduces costs but also means
that the open cycle units can be kept
for use at times of peak demand.
The three plants are geographically
spread in different parts of the coun-
try, and were selected for expansion,
as opposed to building a single new
large facility, for several reasons.
The high voltage grid connections
were already available, as was cool-
ing water, and smaller plants provide
more exibility in terms of power
output and speed of start-up. Further,
the transport of the heavy equipment
that would have been required for a
larger plant would have been almost
impossible.
Each site is also at a fairly low alti-
tude. Bolivia is perhaps ve times
bigger than Germany but only has a
population of around 11 million,
mostly living in two or three major
cities. While it might be expected that
a power plant could be located close
to areas of high load, a couple of those
cities are at a high elevation.
Entfellner noted: “The power plants
are between 200-400 m above sea
level. La Paz, which has about 3 mil-
lion people, is between 3600 m and
4100 m above sea and Cochabamba,
which has about 1 million people is
also at an altitude of 2600 m. Building
the plant at a lower altitude means a
higher output from the gas turbines.”
Termoeléctrica del Sur is located in
southern Bolivia near the border with
Argentina about 120 km east of the
city Tarija, and due to its location
will be able to export power to neigh-
bouring South American nations.
Termoeléctrica de Warnes, is in the
Warnes province next to the city
Santa Cruz; and Termoeléctrica Entre
Ríos is in Cochabamba province,
175 km southeast of Cochabamba.
The overall project has moved at a
relatively fast pace, especially when
considering the logistics of delivering
the equipment from different parts of
the world to three dispersed sites in
Bolivia.
Following nalisation of the Memo-
randum of Understanding (MoU) in
2015, Siemens signed the nal con-
tract and was given Notice-to-Proceed
on May 31, 2016. Siemens’ consor-
tium partner TSK was largely respon-
sible for electrical systems, civil
works, erection and installation.
Manufacture of the gas turbines be-
gan immediately in Finspång, Swe-
den, and the rst unit was ready for
shipping in April 2017.
Manufacturing of the steam tur-
bines, HRSGs as well as the 25 gen-
erators, eight bypass stacks, 25 trans-
formers and the power plant control
systems began on completion of engi-
neering design.
As custom-engineered components,
manufacturing of the boiler and steam
turbines started slightly later than the
gas turbines. Manufacture of the boil-
ers was carried out in China and the
rst was shipped in May 2017. Steam
turbine manufacture was undertaken
in Brazil and the rst machine was
shipped in June 2017.
Shipping and delivery of the major
equipment was quite a challenge,
one that required a great deal of
coordination.
Entfellner said: “We had a team in
Vienna coordinating the engineering,
as well as people in Spain to coordi-
nate the civil works and balance-of-
plant. And of course we had people
working on the gas turbine develop-
ment, boiler design and steam turbine
design, etc. This means we had an
international team to coordinate get-
ting all the equipment ready for ex-
works and getting it to site on time.”
Marcus Koerber, Transport and Lo-
gistics Manager says the project was
“interesting” as well as “challenging
from time-to-time”. Overall there
were about 1000 shipments – all
scheduled to be delivered within a
time frame of roughly one year.
Koerber noted: “We had a lot of
heavy equipment such as the gas
turbines and boiler parts. Some of
the boiler parts weighed up to 170 t
each. And in Bolivia there was a
shortage of the [transport] equip-
ment needed to deliver everything at
the same time. The main task was to
coordinate the shipments in a way so
that equipment was available at the
same time and to arrive at the sites
according to the schedules for erec-
tion and execution.”
The overall project called for ap-
proximately 400 heavy haulage ship-
ments to the three power plants –
nearly 100 heavy-lift shipments and
300 oversize cargo shipments.
In order to streamline deliveries and
have equipment arriving at the same
time to site, Siemens shipped genera-
tors on the same vessel as the gas
Special Project Supplement
THE ENERGY INDUSTRY TIMES - APRIL 2019
Bolivia’s three combined
cycle power plants. From left
to right: Termoeléctrica del
Sur (480 MW); Termoeléctrica
Entre Ríos (480 MW) and
Termoeléctrica de Warnes
(520 MW)
Most of the equipment arrived by boat and was then transported by road to the three sites