ABB has been awarded a $5.9 million substation upgrade contract by Hamersley Iron. The substation is located at the Paraburdoo iron ore mine in the Pilbara region of Western Australia. The upgrade will enable a new gas turbine to be connected to the existing power grid.
The substation upgrade is part of the Paraburdoo 33 kV Rationalisation Project, which is a component of Rio Tinto’s Power System Upgrade Project. This project is progressively adding new generating capacity to provide for the increased demand created by the various mine expansion projects that are being undertaken within the region, to satisfy the growing global appetite for iron ore.
The substation project involves upgrading the existing outdoor 33kV air insulated switchgear (AIS) with more reliable indoor Zx1.2 gas insulated switchgear (GIS). The upgrade will be instrumental in enabling connection of a new gas turbine into the existing power grid.
“The upgrade will be a rationalisation of the existing 33kV switchgear where ABB will be replacing all existing outdoor switchgear with new gas insulated indoor switchgear. The adoption of this new technology will increase operator safety and reduce the number and frequency of maintenance related outages,” says Rory McDonald, ABB substation Manager.
The project is to be completed by the end of January 2009. This is the first contract executed under a recently developed “Framework Agreement”, established by Rio Tinto and ABB to accelerate delivery times and minimise contract management costs, by adopting pre-agreed commercial terms and conditions.
ABB has been involved in a number of substation projects within the region including Millstream 220/132 kV substation, Paraburdoo 220 kV substation augmentation, Hope Downs 220/33 kV substation, Yandicoogina 220/33 kV substation augmentation and Juna Downs 220 kV Switching Station.