Lonsdale Power Station

About This Project

Major challenges faced with this project were obtaining the approval of the EPA for a diesel operated station, complying with the EPA strict clean air policies for the Adelaide metropolitan air shed and meeting very demanding deadlines set by the client.

“new benchmarks have been set by this installation.”

[EPA site inspection]

The plant incorporates 18 x 1.125 MW diesel generators, manufactured specifically for this project, fully enclosed in 30 foot purpose built acoustically treated containers, along with new transformers, Fault limiting reactors, switchgear and cabling for ease of relocation at the end of energy contract.

The South Australian EPA required that the NOx ground level concentration must be less than 60% of the level specified by the NEPM goal for 2008, equivalent to 135 mg/m3 at 25°C. An additional EPA criteria was limiting the total NOx emission to 10 g/sec in order to equalize the diesel station with other possible proposals which involve modern gas turbine technologies.

To meet these goals in low NOx emission it was decided to implement NOx abatement technology and utilise selective catalytic reactors. The air dispersion plume study run for the near field (4 by 4 km) and for the far field (15 by 18 km) has confirmed full compliance with EPA air emission criteria.

The project proved that by using advanced application engineering, diesel power technology can meet the latest strict requirements in air emission standards.