First Siemens gas turbines begin their journey to Egypt

Press release available only in original language. 

The first gas turbines for the largest order in Siemens' history have started their journey to Egypt. Two turbines for the Beni Suef power plant project will be loaded onto a barge at the Berlin Westhafen port, from where they will be shipped to the Rotterdam seaport. Via the Port of Adabiya on the Red Sea the 890-ton cargo will then be transported to Beni Suef. By comparison, an empty Airbus A380 has a weight of 277 metric tons. The gas turbines are scheduled to be installed in the power plant in mid-May.

 The two #sgt58000h gas turbines will begin their three-month trip at Berlin Westhafen and will end it at the Beni Suef power plant project situated around 110 kilometers south of Cairo. The machines, which each measure 12.6 meters long, 5.5 meters high and 5.5 meters wide, will be loaded into a barge with the aid of two cranes and first shipped to the Port of Rotterdam. In this seaport, the two gas turbines will be loaded onto the "Wiebke" heavy load carrier with the ship's onboard cranes. The ship will travel from Rotterdam to the Mediterranean Sea across the Strait of Gibraltar. The cargo arrives at the destination port of Adabiya on the Red Sea, passing through the Suez Canal. A 40-axle trailer will transport the turbines the rest of the way, traveling the 250-kilometer route along the Nile to Beni Suef in about five days.

Directly after they arrive at the Beni Suef construction site, the gas turbines will be unloaded and installed in the power plant's machine room. A total of eight #sgt58000h gas turbines will be installed in the plant in several phases. The facility will be initially operated as a simple cycle gas-fired power plant. After its expansion into a combined cycle power plant with a total installed capacity of approximately 4.8 gigawatts (GW), Beni Suef will be able to supply around 21.6 million people with electricity. The plant will be the largest combined cycle plant in the world after it is completed.

"We expect the plant in Beni Suef to feed electricity into the Egyptian power grid as early as the winter of 2016/2017", says Willi Meixner, CEO of the #siemens Power and Gas Division. "Siemens is helping its Egyptian partner to build a powerful, reliable power supply system with proven power plant technology."

The H-class gas turbines from Berlin will play a key role in the planned expansion of Egypt's power generation system. In total, 24 highly efficient turbines, 24 heat recovery steam generators, twelve steam turbines and 36 generators will be installed in the country's three power plant projects. #siemens is not only supplying the key components for all three plants but is also supporting Egypt with logistics and the execution of this mega project.

Siemens will build a total of three natural gas-fired combined cycle power plants with H-class technology and a total capacity of 14.4 GW in Egypt. In January 2016, Siemens' broke several world records in the Lausward combined cycle power plant in Düsseldorf with its advanced H-class turbine. The plant achieved an efficiency of approximately 61.5 percent and a record capacity of 603.8 megawatts.