NGL PLANT CASE STUDY

Trinity Power Equipment & Team At Alberta NGL Plant

A new natural gas plant isn’t a facility that one can simply put into action with the flip of a switch once the last nut is torqued. Instead, plant engineers must first ensure all systems will operate to their intended specifications once operations commence. A recent assignment for Trinity Power helped just such a commissioning process get an early start, allowing our customer to begin earning some return on their capital investment several months earlier than might otherwise have been the case.

A large energy transportation company contacted Trinity as their new gas plant was reaching completion. This plant, one of a number the company has in an area south of Grand Prairie, Alberta, is designed to extract natural gas liquids for transport through the company’s pipeline system. While utility lines weren’t anticipated to reach the site for several months, facility managers still wanted to get a jump on their commissioning efforts, and Trinity was able to get them the power they needed for this project.

A job this size requires more than a generator set and some cable – the customer needed a turnkey package capable of supporting a range of operational testing at a truly industrial-scale facility. To begin, we provided three 200kW/480V natural gas generators, and then we added a full suite of distribution equipment. This included a transformer to step up the generators’ 480V output to 4160V, and off that transformer we provided two 5kV disconnects – one to feed the motor control center (MCC) and the other to allow the commissioning staff to “bump” test the onsite 5kV motors. We then ran 200M of 5kV cable from the MCC disconnect to the MCC, itself, where the power was stepped back down to 480V for connection to that equipment’s own distribution system.

The end result was a significant timesaving for our customer. While local utility was completing its job to bring power to the job site, Trinity’s equipment and expertise gave our customer the power they needed to complete their testing and adjustments. The plant was able to begin operations as soon as the utility power arrived onsite, essentially preventing two months of delay.