The Orapa Power Station is a
Peak load power generation plant located in the mining town of
Orapa in northeastern
Botswana in the
Central District. It is built within the
Debswana Diamond Company Ltd Orapa diamond mine fenced leased area and owned by the Government of Botswana who mandated the
Botswana Power Corporation to manage, operate and maintain the facility.
Background
The plant construction was initiated when
Botswana started experiencing electricity supply challenges from year 2007 when demand for electricity in the
country started exceeding the county's electricity generation capacity leading to forced periodic nation wide
load shedding excises by the
Botswana Power Corporation. The plant was a short term response to the mining industry electricity requirements prior to the development of Mmamabula and Morupule B power stations.
The plant site is located next to an
electrical substation
A substation is a part of an electrical generation, transmission, and distribution system. Substations transform voltage from high to low, or the reverse, or perform any of several other important functions. Between the generating station and ...
through which it connects to the
national grid and was designed to use either
natural gas or
diesel as
fuel
A fuel is any material that can be made to react with other substances so that it releases energy as thermal energy or to be used for work. The concept was originally applied solely to those materials capable of releasing chemical energy but ...
. It was commissioned using
diesel with a planned conversion to
natural gas once construction of a
gas pipeline from nearby
gas fields was complete and commissioned.
Specifications
The plant consists of two 45MW
GE LM6000 Sprint
Simple Cycle
In graph theory, a cycle in a graph is a non-empty trail in which only the first and last vertices are equal. A directed cycle in a directed graph is a non-empty directed trail in which only the first and last vertices are equal.
A graph witho ...
gas turbines
A gas turbine, also called a combustion turbine, is a type of continuous flow internal combustion engine. The main parts common to all gas turbine engines form the power-producing part (known as the gas generator or core) and are, in the directi ...
fueled using
diesel.
The energy produced is transferred to the
national grid via the interconnected Orapa Substation by use of two short
132kV overhead power lines.
See also
*
List of power stations in Botswana
*
List of natural gas power stations
References
{{Reflist
Fossil fuel power stations in Botswana