Clarke Energy: Global Power Solutions with a Focus on Africa and CHP Innovations
Empowered energy
From its international headquarters ‘Power House’ located in Knowsley Business Park near Liverpool, Clarke Energy operates as a global leader in the provision of specialist engineering, installation and maintenance services for engine-based power plants. The company began trading during 1989 from a base in Aintree near Liverpool, providing spare parts globally to the end users of marine, industrial and locomotive diesel engines. Since relocating to its current headquarters in 1992, Clarke Energy has continued to grow and today provides employment for 1000 members of staff across 17 countries globally with a total capacity exceeding 4800MWe. It presently maintains operations within Algeria, Australia, Bangladesh, Botswana, France, Cameroon; India, Ireland, Lesotho, Morocco, Mozambique, New Zealand, Nigeria, South Africa, Swaziland, Tanzania, Tunisia and the United Kingdom. Present in Africa since 2001, its installed base in the African continent exceeds 500MWe and throughout all of the regions in which it is active, Clarke Energy is committed to delivering the highest quality installation along with a reliable, localised support network.
As an internationally acknowledged specialist in the engineering, installation and maintenance of engine-based power plants, Clarke Energy’s service offering includes both gas and dieselfuelled technology. The company is also the world’s largest authorised distributor and service provider for GE’s reciprocating engine business. It can provide scopes of service ranging from individual generators to EPC turnkey multiengine power plants backed up by long-term service support. Furthermore, Clarke Energy is a specialist in high efficiency utilisation of fuels and is an innovator in the field of combined heat and power (CHP) technology. Applications include CHP with natural gas, biogas, landfill gas, coal gas and associated petroleum gas or high efficiency diesel-fuelled power generation.
“The gas that comes from oil wells is typically termed ‘Associated Petroleum Gas’ – APG or ‘flare gas’. This gas can exist separate from oil in the formation (free gas) or it can be dissolved in the crude oil. Independent from the source of the gas, once separated from crude oil it commonly exists in mixtures with other hydrocarbons such as ethane, propane, butane and pentanes. In addition, raw natural gas contains water vapor, hydrogen sulphide (H2S) and carbon dioxide (CO2), nitrogen (N2) and other compounds,” explains Business Development Director, Ali Hjaiej. “The APG that contains such impurities cannot be transported easily and also cannot be used without treatment since it is recovered during the oil production process. Clarke Energy has solutions to transform this waste gas to power through GE’s Jenbacher gas engine technology.”
In recent years, Clarke Energy has been increasingly active in Africa and has completed prestigious projects for OMV and ETAP in Tunisia. “The Waha facilities project is one of the famous projects in North Africa where Clarke Energy has installed three power generators to transform the flared gas (APG) to power, which provides electricity to an isolated platform 300km far from the grid. In this project Clarke Energy substituted five diesel generators by using existing gas that was being wasted through flaring. With this solution, we stopped the use of low efficiency diesel in isolated sites and stopped the frequent long distance truck travels to deliver diesel from Gabes to Waha (~300km) and reduce exploitation fees (diesel and transportation),” Ali elaborates. “This project has many other advantages such as reducing the carbon emission related to diesel consumption for power generation and flare gas.”
The success of Clarke Energy’s first projects in North Africa has created real opportunities in the region, where it already has a solid installed base of 65MW. This has allowed the company to become a market leader in CHP and combined cooling heat and power (CCHP) projects in North Africa and a major key player for developing distributed power generation for the region. Furthermore, in November 2015 Clarke Energy and Ecomed Group were nominated for the Pollutec Maroc award and went on to win the award for ‘outstanding achievement’ with the Fez landfill in Morocco. “The acquisition of the Fez landfill Award for ‘Outstanding Achievement’ between Clarke Energy and Ecomed, a key player in Morocco for waste management with 10 landfills throughout the country, will encourage the African continent to follow the successful model in order to help them to resolve waste management difficulties and provide green power for localities,” Ali says. “This project is the first step with 1000kW power generation. The potential of 3000kW will be installed for the next step to provide 100 per cent of electricity for lighting needs of Fez.”
As the company enters into 2016, it will continue to draw on the strengths of its industry experience and knowhow to assist in the development of the African market. “Clarke Energy provides a reliable and efficient energy solution. By using CHP application, the industrial user can save 30 per cent of their energy costs and increase the availability of electricity for their facilities,” Ali concludes. “The strategy of Clarke Energy is to support the African market by developing new industry opportunities and therefore give more hope for African people to improve their social situation. We help African decision makers to face the challenges of developing the infrastructure by reducing energy needs and help address the problems of waste management.”
Clarke Energy
Services: Specialist engineering, installation and maintenance