piling where necessary; and subsequent civil works, which includes concreting, steel erection and the construction that is still ongoing. Orascom and Elsewedy have made huge investments in training of local people, e.g. in welding schools to maximise the local added value and knowledge transfer. The footprint of each power plant is 1200 m x 600-800 m, depending on the location. Roughly the same space is needed during the construction phase for laydown area and preparation. Civil works and site preparation was by no means plain sailing. Burullus is located in a nature reserve between Burullus Lake and the Mediterranean Sea, which meant the ground conditions were very swampy. This meant 18 400 piles, each with a diameter of 1 m and 30 m long, had to be driven into the ground in order to stabilise the site. Ullrich explained: “The site is right on the beach, so to speak – you would be constantly building on a swamp area into the water. So first we had to raise the whole level by 2 m to drain the site, and then pile in order to support the thousands of tons of concrete.” Beni Suef presented a different set of challenges. As Ullrich explained: “We had to excavate 1.6 million m3 of rock – the size of the small pyramid in Giza – in order to level a 40 m slope between the Nile and the entrance to the site. The slope is in a rock formation, which you can’t build on, so you have to build terraces. There are five different terraces at five different heights. We had to use 120 rock excavation machines to form the terraces on which the power plant components are placed.” Although a significant distance, Beni Suef is also reachable – either from the Port of Alexandria on the Mediterranean coast or from the port on the Red Sea. Each are approximately 300 km away. Accessibility, however, was an issue that had to be addressed at Burullus. There is just one road to the Mediterranean harbour, which was not in the Special Project Supplement Exhaust gas from the gas turbine, at a temperature of about 630°C, is fed to a three-pressure HRSG. The HRSG is a Benson-type boiler also supplied by Siemens (following its acquisition of NEM). The HRSG supplies 107 kg/s of high pressure (HP) steam at 589°C and pressure of 178 barg; 122 kg/s of reheat steam (RH) at 585°C/34.5 barg and 11 kg/s of low pressure (LP) steam at 247 °C/4 barg. Steam from the HRSG is combined with expanded RH steam so total flow to the steam turbine is 133 kg/s. Steam from the HRSG is fed to a 400 MW steam turbine that features a HP section and a combined intermediate pressure/low pressure (IP/LP) section. Completion of all 12 combined cycle bocks is scheduled for 2018, at which time they will be the largest CCGT power plants ever built and operated in the world. Construction of the plants has been a monumental task, one that has called for close collaboration between Siemens and its Egyptian partners and customers from the outset. Although Siemens has the biggest share (62 per cent) of the contract and is consortium leader, it was paramount that the companies worked seamlessly. “From the beginning while we were preparing contract documentation, we worked as one team together with our partners and customers,” said Ghaly. “And we are still working as one team at all levels.” The official contract for Beni Suef, Burullus, New Capital and the wind farms was signed in June 2015 at a ceremony in Berlin attended by President Al-Sisi. In December that year the government signed the six substations contract with Siemens to distribute part of the 14.4 GW of power, which will be generated from the three power plants. In essence, however, the project started before contract signing. Peter Ullrich, Project Director for the three CCGT plants said: “The project started during the last phase of negotiations, which in this case was a very short phase.” Once the contract for the three power plants was concluded, instructions were given to Siemens manufacturing facilities worldwide that they would have to work around the clock to meet the delivery schedules for the main equipment (24 gas turbines, 12 steam turbines, 36 generators, 24 heat recovery steam generators, 24, bypass stacks, 24 stacks, four air-cooled condensers and 36 transformers). Ullrich was full of praise for the EPC core team and all units that contributed to the timely delivery of all key components. “I must say they did a fascinating job; I am proud of their dedication, flexibility and excellence.” The delivery of 36 generators meant Siemens had to call on both its generator factories in Mülheim, Germany, and Charlotte in the US. “Twenty of the generators were manufactured in Mülheim and 16 were manufactured at our Charlotte premises,” said Ullrich. At the same time, NEM had to manufacture the biggest 24 HRSGs in the history of gas fired power plants – a huge undertaking. “You cannot imagine how many tons of steel, the amount of piping, welding and fabricating this requires,” noted Ullrich. He stressed that global sourcing was one of the early challenges. “When you purchase and import in total over 1.6 million tons of material with 7000 containers from all over the world, then you face a great challenge to find qualified suppliers that can provide the required quantities at the highest quality and transport them in a very short time in order to meet our fasttrack schedule. Managing the whole logistics process has been a huge challenge. “After manufacturing the goods, the whole delivery and logistics process, outside and inside of Egypt, was a great challenge but we managed,” said Ullrich. “This was only possible by relying on responsible teams and partners thanks to all stakeholders and local authorities in Egypt.” While Siemens has total responsibility for the manufacture, delivery, installation of equipment and commissioning of the plants, the tremendous work and effort of managing civil, construction and erection works was down to the local partners, who “excelled in doing a remarkable job”. Ullrich said: “We did not need to import civil engineering, since this was a great strength locally.” Orascom Construction and Elsewedy Electric were therefore responsible for all site preparation work, e.g. fencing, site levelling and THE ENERGY INDUSTRY TIMES - APRIL 2017 One of four 400 MW gas turbines arriving at the Beni Suef power plant Steam turbine components being lifted on to the transport vessel. The first steam turbine arrived at North Sea port in December 2016 One of the HRSG modules for Beni Suef combined cycle power plant being loaded on to a vessel in South Korea
Energy Industry Times April 2017
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