Alstom power plants for Italy

Alstom has won contracts worth €470 million to build two combined-cycle power plants, based around four GT26 gas turbines, in central and southern Italy.

The first contract, worth more than €300 million, is with Abruzzoenergia to supply an 800 MW power plant at Gissi, in the Abruzzo region of central Italy. Alstom will design, supply, install and commission the entire power plant, which will be based on two GT26 sequential combustion gas turbines with associated steam turbines and electrical generators.

Alstom will also supply two heat recovery steam generators, air-cooled condenser systems, a state-of-the-art distributed control system and other plant.

Gissi is a “fast-track” project, with the first unit due to produce power in November 2007 and the second unit in December 2007.

Eurosviluppo Elettrica awarded the second contract to an Alstom-led consortium for the construction of a turnkey 800 MW GT26-based combined-cycle cogeneration power plant in Scandale, in the Calabria region of southern Italy. The contract is worth around €340 million, of which Alstom's share is around 50%.

Alstom will supply two GT26-gas turbines, two steam turbines, four TOPAIR generators, two air-cooled condensers, the plant control system and balance of plant for the power island. The project is expected to be completed in April 2008.

Both plants will be designed to produce a very low level of NOx and CO emissions. In addition, at Scandale, the waste heat produced by the power plant will be re-used for external industrial processes such as wood drying. This increases the amount of fuel converted into usable energy to 75%, as opposed to 56.5% without the cogeneration.

The associated long-term service contracts for both power plants are currently under negotiation.