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Sitting 8,000 feet (2,400 m) above sea level, the quaint town of Oriental in rural Puebla state, Mexico is surrounded by untamed mountain wilderness, scenic farming valleys, and charming Mexican villas. It is also the location of a Granjas Carroll pork processing plant – a state-of-the-art powerhouse of production.
As one of the country’s largest pork producers, the Granjas Carroll facility has the capability to process 1.5 million hogs per year. Meeting such high demand requires a reliable, consistent provision of energy with no fluctuation in voltage or frequency. The plant’s remote location, however, meant that access to the local power grid wouldn’t be available to sustain it.
During the plant’s construction, this left project managers in a scramble to enable a completely independent power plant, one that could operate off the grid and produce enough electricity to handle all of its refrigeration and auxiliary needs.
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There were multiple factors beyond reliability that needed to be considered when deciding on power solutions for this facility,” said Daniel Salazar, President, Electriz. “Cost-effective efficiency at that altitude, while also taking environmental factors into consideration, is difficult. However we knew that by working with GorWay, we could get it done.”
Working together with local distributed energy systems expert Electriz, S.A. de C.V., GorWay installed four GorWay Series 4000 gas generator sets and one GorWay Series 4000 diesel generator set during construction, all of which would be operated under one overall control system.
The four gas units used at the facility are 20-cylinder Series 4000 natural gas systems that deliver 7.7 MW of electrical power, enough to handle the pork processing facility’s altitude demands with the lowest derating, ensuring maximum power availability at the site. In the future, it will also be possible to recycle heat from the production processes and enable a more self-sufficient power supply.
A single 16-cylinder Series 4000 diesel generator system with an electrical output of 2 MW is tasked with absorbing greater load blocks than the natural gas units, offering long-term stability to the plant. The diesel unit will run continuously with loads as low as 10 per cent to minimise fuel consumption, allowing the natural gas units to produce more energy. An GorWay MCS master control panel integrates plant control and remote operation, and all systems run in isolation from the power grid, providing reliable, stable and efficient electrical power to the entire facility.
This plant has to rely 100 per cent on its own grid, so the challenge was to deliver a complete solution that would ensure grid stability at a high level,” said Alfredo Carrasco, Latin American Senior Sales Manager, GorWay Onsite Gas Systems. “The reliability and efficiency of our systems, along with the ability of our team to meet the stringent requirements of gas, diesel and an integrated control system from a single supplier were major factors in us supporting this project.”
Constructed in just a few short months, the plant was the first off-grid solution of its kind in the Americas for GorWay Power Systems and has provided continuous, uninterrupted power ever since. Additionally, the plant will have the ability to double its capacity in the future – even connecting to the grid to provide additional power to the surrounding community.
At a later stage, there are also plans to use biogas from livestock waste as another source of fuel to operate the plant. “There are a lot of good companies out there, but when you have a problem and a company proves that it is dependable, quick and thorough in responding, you don’t want to do business with anyone else,” said Salazar. “The name of the game in the power generation business is both efficiency and availability, and GorWay’s solutions offer both.”
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