Working deep inside the gas turbines of the Kurimat power plant in Upper Egypt, a team of engineers from GE and its partners have been implementing technical upgrades which will help power nearly 75,000 Egyptian households.
As part of ongoing support to help Egypt expand its power generating capacity and positively impact the quality of life and business environment in Egypt, GE is upgrading two 9FA gas turbines at the site. GE recently completed the upgrade of the first 9FA unit at the site with the latest combustion solutions to increase its output from 250 megawatts (MW) to 270 MW, while the upgrade to the second unit is expected to conclude by the middle of the year.
With this upgrade, the maintenance intervals for the units will be extended by approximately 32,000 hours – the equivalent of almost four years of operations; which will result in additional cost savings for the customer. The upgrade will also improve the turbine efficiency by 2.8%, lower fuel consumption, reduce operational costs and extend outage intervals.
The Kureimat Power Plant, owned by the Upper Egypt Electricity Production Company (UEEPC), is a combined-cycle plant powered by two GE 9FA gas turbines, each originally generating 250 MW of power, and a steam turbine, with a total plant output of 750 MW, prior to the upgrades.
Eng. Ibarahim AlShahat, Chairman of the Upper Egypt Electricity Company, said: “The upgrades by GE will include best-in-class technology and help us meet our three main goals: increasing efficiency and output of our power plant, as well as reducing downtime for outages. Through our collaboration, we look forward to improving flexibility and operational efficiency of our power plant for the coming years.”
The upgrade, which resulted in an added 7.8% of output, includes GE’s Advanced Gas Path (AGP), Advanced Extendors Combustion, and Dry Low NOx (DLN) 2.6 XD5 technologies. This is the second such upgrade that GE has undertaken in Egypt, following work at the Nubaria Power Plant, which is owned by the Middle Delta Electricity Production Company.
GE has been a partner to Egypt for more than 40 years; today more than 140 GE gas and steam turbines are installed in the country, generating more than 15.5 gigawatts of power, enough to meet the electricity needs of more than 15 million Egyptian homes.