A powership (or power ship) is a special purpose marine vessel, on which a power plant is

installed to serve as a power generationresource. It is an existing ship that has been modified for
power generation, a marine vessel, on which a power plant is installed to serve as a power
generation resource. Converted from existing ships, powerships are self-propelled, ready to go
infrastructure for developing countries that plug into national grids where required.
[1]
Unmotorised
powerships, known as power barges, are simply conventional power plants installed on a
deck barge. These are sometimes called "floating power plants" or "barge mounted power
plants". They were initially developed during World War II by General Electric for the War
Production Board as a transportable large scale power generation resource.
Powerships can be equipped with single or multiple gas turbines, reciprocating diesel and gas
engines, boilers or nuclear reactors for electricity generation. Bureau Veritas, an
international certification agency with experience in overseeing both shipbuilding and power plant
development, classifies such floating power plants as "special service power plants".
[1]

A total of about four self-propelled powerships are currently deployed around the world, while
there are over 75 power barges worldwide, including over 600 MW of generation capacity in New
York City. Power barges can be built very quickly in comparison to a power ship or a land based
plant. A 100 MW gas turbine power barge can be built in about 3 months and be ready for
deployment.
[citation needed]

Contents
[hide]
1 History
2 Current usage
3 Power barges
4 Construction and installation
o 4.1 Vibration and thermal growth
5 From New York City to Bangladesh
6 Powerships built
o 6.1 Defunct
o 6.2 In use
7 Notable powerbarges
8 See also
9 References
History[edit]
One of the earliest (if not the first) powership built was in 1931, the SS Jacona built by the
Newport News, Virginia Shipyard and Drydock Company, for the New England Public Service
Company of Augusta, Maine. The idea came to the president of the Augusta firm, when one
winter a severe winter storm took out a lot of the New England major power transmission lines.
The Jacona role would be to dock as near as possible to the affected area and hook into the
local power grid restoring power. During the Summer months the Jacona would hook into
vacation area power grids where power needs are extremely low during off season and
extremely high during the Summer vacation season. The Jacona was fitted with steam boilers
which drove two generators which could produce 10,000 kW each.
[2]

At one time the US Navy used its submarines when disaster hit a local community bring down
the commercial power grid, this led to the idea of powerships for the US Navy, and an early US
Navy powership was the USS Saranac, a former US Navy naval ship. Saranac was a 1942
built fleet oiler before her conversion into a powership following the Second World War to serve
in the US Navy and Army. In 1957, she was sold to Hugo Neu Corporation of New York City and
was used then as a power facility abroad by the International Steel and Metal Corporation. In
1959, she was renamed Somerset.
[3]

The first floating nuclear reactor ship was the MH-1A, in the Panama canal zone.
[citation needed]

Power barges and power ships offer a number of advantages over other forms of power plants;
due to their mobility, powerships can be connected to local power grids to temporarily cover
demands whenever on site power plants are insufficient or the building of new power plants will
take time,
[4]
while dual-fuel engines on board can be powered by either liquid fuels or gas. The
power barge and power ship are able to use any infrastructure available at the site on which she
is required.
[4][5]

Current usage[edit]
Some recently built power ships are existing large bulk carriers, which are fitted with used
reciprocating engines and new state-of-the-art, large-bore dual-fuel diesel engines that run on
heavy fuel or natural gas to generate electricity,
[5]
relevant transformers and electric
switchboards. The only other power ships were based on US Naval vessels. Power ships utilizing
new purpose built ships would not be competitive to a purpose built power barge due to the
higher cost of construction. The crew quarters and propulsion systems are under utilized during
the power plant operational period which can be up to the life of the power plant.
It is expected that a power barge or power ship will moor at one place for an average duration of
three to five years, or up to 20 years. For this reason, power ships are an ideal solution to bridge
the gap for a certain time until a local power plant is built or the high demand in electricity supply
is over.
[4]

Karadeniz Powership Co. Ltd., a subsidiary of Karadeniz Energy Group based in Turkey,
developed and carries out a project named "Power of Friendship" that aims to provide a total of
2,010 MW of electricity to more than ten shortage-stricken countries in the Middle East, northern
Africa and southern Asia with ten different ships by the end of 2010.
[6][7]
The first powership of the
project, which can supply 144 MW power, went into service at the beginning of 2010 off the
shore near Basra in south-eastern Iraq,
[8]
and the second powership is on its way to the same
place.
[9]
The company also signed a contract with Pakistan.,
[4]
but the Pakistani government
terminated this project.
All other builders of power ships have gone out of business.
Power barges[edit]
Power barges are in demand for their short construction cycles, flexibility in deployment, minimal
land requirements. The capital costs of constructing and operating power barges are very
competitive with their land-based equivalents.
Construction and installation[edit]
Power barges are typically moored in protected harbors, and may be entirely self-contained with
step-up transformers or connected with land-based transformers that send electricity to domestic
consumers. If the purchaser defaults, the manufacturer or intermediary can tow the barge(s)
away and sell the plant to another customer. Floating power plants are usually constructed off-
site at a shipyard, and then transported via dry tow to the end-use location.
Vibration and thermal growth[edit]
Gas turbines and diesels generate substantial amounts of vibration both during start-up and
operations. The gas turbine generator coupling is very sensitive to alignment and therefore,
controlling deflection is paramount. Foundation designs seek to either isolate the deck barge and
the power island raft or to combine the structures of the power island and deck barge to gain the
same structural rigidity. The difference is that the integrated structural approach yields a direct
path for vibration, while the isolated structural approach seeks the rigidity in an independent
foundation and utilizes spring mounts or other mat type vibration dampening.
The deck barge will tend to exhibit thermal growth during the diurnal cycles and possible out-of-
trim conditions referred to as hogging and sagging caused by changes in ballast or fuel.
The power island design requires certain deflection limitations at the generator coupling and
vibration dampening from start-up or out-of-phase operations, as well as significant trip loads
mostly in the generator section. The power barge systems engineer must integrate power island
engineering with naval architecture and marine engineering.
From New York City to Bangladesh[edit]
During the 1990s, power barges became a popular way of providing energy to developing
nations, with companies including equipment suppliers like General
Electric,Westinghouse, Wrtsil, and MAN; by developers such as Smith
Cogeneration, AES, GMR Vasavi, which operate floating power plants for customers located
in New York City(USA), Khulna (Bangladesh), the Dominican Republic, Brazil, Ecuador, Angola,
Nigeria, Thailand, Effassu (Ghana), as well as in the Philippines, Jamaica, Kenya, and Malaysia.
Engineering, procurement and construction companies such as
www.powerbargecorp.com/ Power Barge Corporation, Waller Marine Inc, Hyundai, IHI
Corporation and Mitsuioffer gas turbine power barge construction programs, and Karadeniz
Energy, MAN and Wrtsil offer medium speed engine power barges.
Today there are over 75 power barges deployed and operating around the world. The utilization
rate of power barges is around 95% with only one or two power barges available in the global
market at any one time.
In April 2011, Waller Marine finalized installation in Venezuela of two large floating power
generation barges into a prepared basin at Tacoa. The two 171 MW barges, each supporting a
GE 7FA dual fuel industrial gas turbine, are connected to the grid and soon supply much needed
power to Caracas. Power Barge Corporation recently delivered a 96 MW gas turbine power
barge to Angola and a 105 MW gas turbine power barge to Venezuela