Alstom signs plant control contract

Alstom has signed a contract worth more than €100m (£90m) with Eskom to provide the instrumentation and control system for the world’s largest coal-fired power plant, Medupi in South Africa.

Alstom has also provided Eskom with the option, worth an additional €100m, to install an identical system on Medupi’s sister plant, Kusile.

Medupi and Kusile, currently under construction, are the largest dry-cooled coal-fired power plants in the world. Each will have an output of almost 4,800MW, powered by six 790MW Alstom turbines and generators.

Under the terms and conditions of the contract, Alstom will engineer, supply and install its latest distributed control system (DCS), the ALSPA Series 6, and all related instrumentation.

Philippe Joubert, president of Alstom Power, said: ‘The ALSPA Series 6 distributed control system is the first major product resulting from our collaboration with Microsoft to address the new “smart grid” challenges.’