The RFI calls for start of commercial operation, following financial close, of either three to six month or six to twelve month.
In its proposal, Karpowership informed South Africa’s energy department on “what is possible, where and how we would look to do it,” said Patrick O’Driscoll, global sales director at Karpowership.
Several locations have been identified as potential mooring points for the ships, suitable to inject the electricity generated offshore into the South African power grid. Each ship can provide a range of power supply options between 30 MW and 600 MW, and can be hired for different time spans.
Gas-fuelled powerships cheaper than diesel gensets
Eskom currently needs to spend billion of South African rand annually to buy diesel for emergency power units, mostly driven by open-cycle gas turbines. Karpowership underlined that the operational cost of one of its gas-fuelled ships will be “significantly less, maybe even half the cost of those [Eskom’s] peakers.”
Speed of delivery is crucial for emergency power solutions; hence O’Driscoll pointed out that a Karpowership was recently delivered and operated a 120MW contract in Senegal within just nine weeks. In addition, the 235 MW Powership Ayşegül Sultan is moored off Dakar since August 2019, contracted to supply 15 percent of Senegal’s electricity needs for 5.5 years.
Headquartered in Istanbul, Karpowership is the only owner, operator and builder of the first Powership fleet in the world. It has 25 powerships, all built in Turkey, in operation and an order book to build new vessels in excess of 4,400MW.