MAN Energy Solutions Wins POWER Magazine Award

MAN Energy Solutions has won POWER magazine’s Top Plant award at the annual Experience POWER Conference, held recently in San Antonio, Texas. The award was for its 200-MW Phnom Penh power plant, commissioned earlier this year and which features 11 × MAN 18V51/60DF dual-fuel engines.

Thomas Forst – Head of Project Management, Segment Power – MAN Energy Solutions, said: “A lot of work went into putting the concept for this power plant together and within such a tight timeframe. We are very happy to receive this recognition for our efforts from POWER magazine, which is so widely esteemed within the industry.”

Project background     

MAN Energy Solutions – together with China National Heavy Machinery  Corporation (CHMC) – commissioned the 200 MW power plant near the  Cambodian capital and handed over to national utility, Electricité du Cambodge, in April 2021. CHMC was responsible for the engineering, procurement, and construction (EPC) of the plant, while MAN Energy Solutions took care of the supply and commissioning of the eleven engines and related plant auxiliaries.

In the dry seasons of recent years, the country’s national grid has faced stability  issues due to the inability of its hydropower plants to operate at full capacity. As a  result, the Cambodian government launched an emergency programme in 2019 to  stabilise the supply system through flexible generation capacity. 

The project followed a tight timeline to deliver and successfully commission all 11 engines in less than 20 months. Ultimately, the MAN project team succeeded despite the numerous constraints posed by the Covid-19 pandemic.

The power plant will initially run on heavy fuel oil with the possibility to operate on much-lower-emission natural gas in the future; the dual-fuel engines are also capable of switching seamlessly from one fuel type to another during operation.