Iberdrola Engineering and Construction Setting Up World's First Hybrid Combined-Cycle Power Plant

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Researched by Industrial Info Resources (Sugar Land, Texas)--Iberdrola Engineering and Construction SA (Madrid, Spain), the wholly owned engineering subsidiary of energy company Iberdrola SA (OTC:IBDRY) (Bilbao, Spain), is building what is perhaps the world's first hybrid power plant. The facility will be built at Kuraymat in Egypt. The integrated solar combined-cycle (ISCC) power plant will be one of the world's most modern hybrid combined-cycle (HCC) power generation plants. The plant has been designed to operate on both gas and solar power and is scheduled to begin operating in October this year.

The 30-month construction of the 150-megawatt (MW) Kuraymat ISCC plant began in January 2008. After a two-month integration phase, the plant will be integrated with the solar field, followed by a month of reliability tests. At night, the ISCC plant will operate as a conventional natural gas-based combined-cycle plant. During the day, the power plant will operate as an HCC plant based on gas and solar power.

The core of the combined-cycle plant is being built with a 74-MW GE 6FA gas turbine from the General Electric Company (NYSE:GE) (Fairfield, Connecticut) and an 80-MW steam turbine from Siemens AG (NYSE:SI) (Munich, Germany). The gas combined-cycle portion of the plant will generate 110 MW, while solar power will contribute 40 MW. The combination will render the power plant an efficiency of about 68%, which is about 10 percentage points higher than the average conventional combined-cycle plant. Such a power plant represents an alternative to the coexistence of renewable energy and conventional plants.

Iberdrola Engineering and Construction was awarded the engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) contract by the government of Egypt and the New Renewable Energy Authority (NREA) (Cairo, Egypt) in 2007. The Kuraymat project site is a flat piece of almost uninhabited mid-desert land that receives sun exposure equivalent to about 2.4 megawatt-hours (MWh) per square meter per year. The project site is strategically located in an area already equipped with grid infrastructure, natural gas pipelines, and water sources, as the river Nile is quite close to the project site.

The solar field consists of parallel rows of solar collector arrays. Each parabolic trough focuses the solar energy on an absorber pipe running along the focal line of the row of troughs. The 2,000 solar collectors, which cover a 130,000-square-meter area, rotate on a north-south axis and track the sun from the east to the west. They are connected in series and in parallel, and effectively produce thermal energy. The generated thermal energy heats a heat transfer fluid circulating through the receiver up to about 400 degrees Celsius. The heated fluid then flows through a heat exchanger and generates steam that is superheated in a heat recovery steam generator and combined with the steam generated by the combined-cycle portion of the plant. The two integrated streams of steam then enter the steam turbine to generate electricity.

The solar field technology is licensed from Flagsol GmbH (Cologne, Germany), a joint venture between engineering company Ferrostaal AG (Essen, Germany) and renewable energy company Solar Millennium AG (ETR:S2M) (Erlangen, Germany). Orascom Construction Industries (CAI:OCIC) (OCI) (Cairo) is implementing the construction contract. The total project cost is estimated to be 250 million euros ($305 million), with the solar field accounting for about 30% of the cost.

The Kuraymat ISCC power plant is expected to generate about 852,000 MWh per year of electricity, with solar power contributing about 4% of the total electricity. The electricity generated is expected to power the homes of about 200,000 residents. The power plant will also represent the potential of the abundantly available solar power in the region and its capacity to be integrated with other resources.

Although similar plants are being set up in Algeria and in Morocco, the Kuraymat ISCC power plant is set to be the first one to begin operations. Similar projects in India, Iran and Mexico are still in the design phase.

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