Power for Saudi Arabia

10 March 2005

An Alstom -led consortium has won a €627 million turnkey contract with Saudi Electricity Company to add three generating blocks to the Saudi Arabian Shoaiba power plant, making it the largest power plant in the Middle East.

Under the contract, worth €560 million to Alstom, the consortium will build the final three 400MW units of the 11-unit steam power plant, increasing the total power output to more than 4,400MW.

Alstom will design, supply, install and commission the entire power plant, including boilers, steam turbines generators and the complete balance of plant and systems for the three units while Alstom’s consortium partner, Saudi Archirodon Constructions, will carry out all the associated civil works. The boilers are designed to burn both crude and heavy oil, and use Alstom’s low NOx tangential-firing technology.

The Alstom -led consortium also supplied, on a turnkey basis, the previous eight units at Shoaiba, beginning with an initial contract won in November 1998. The final units of the plant, located on the Red Sea coast 100 km south of the city of Jeddah, are scheduled to be fully operational in the first half of 2008.