The second steam unit of Ferdowsi Combined-Cycle Power Plant in Mashhad, Khorasan Razavi Province, came on stream on Wednesday, managing director of the plant said.
“The new unit added 160 megawatts to the national power grid and the third steam unit will become operational next summer,” the Energy Ministry’s news portal also quoted Fariborz Motameni as saying.
With an investment of $200 million, the scheme was carried out by Iran’s top engineering and energy enterprise, MAPNA Group.
Upon the completion of the last unit, the station will have a total capacity of 1,434 MW, including six gas units of 159 MW and three steam units of 160 MW, he noted.
Located 25 km from Mashhad, the power plant is being developed over 60 hectares. Due to the growing electricity demand of Khorasan Razavi Province and neighboring provinces, the development project of turning the conventional thermal power plant into a combined-cycle plant with a higher output and efficiency is of great importance.
“In gas power plants, the heat from gas units is released into the outside environment from the exhaust of units with a temperature of 540 to 600 degrees centigrade which, in addition to wasting energy, increases the emission of greenhouse gases. Conducting heat to the steam sector will help the environment and generate electrical energy,” he added.
Emphasizing that the three steam units of the plant will prevent the emission of 2.4 million tons of carbon dioxide per year, Motameni said achieving a 50% saving of 870 million liters of liquid fuel per year for the entire steam sector and reducing environmental pollution are among the goals of the project.
“Eight hundred people are active in the construction phase and 1,500 are indirectly involved in the project,” he said.
Combined Cycle
The first steam unit of the plant was launched in September 2020, as the first step to convert the conventional thermal station into a more efficient combined-cycle plant.
The gas section, which came on stream a decade ago, consumes 2.1 billion cubic meters of gas per year. The upgraded plant's natural gas consumption should decline by an estimated 1.1 bcm.
The project to convert the plant’s system into combined cycle is aimed at raising efficiency by 17%. The conventional plant’s efficiency was 33% and the shift to combined cycle will raise it to 56%.
Energy efficiency of a conventional thermal power station, as a percentage of the heating value of the fuel is consumed, is typically 33-48%.
Over 95% of the equipment used in the project to convert the thermal power plant into a combined-cycle system are produced domestically.
MAPNA Group is the contractor of the project.
With 41 subsidiary companies, MAPNA produces 60 products and offers 85 types of services to the power industry alone. About 50% of power are used by MAPNA. It has implemented more than 100 major energy projects worth over $30 billion in 30 years.
With an installed power production capacity of about 86,000 MW, Iran meets almost 80% of its electricity demand from aging thermal plants that outlived their usefulness. Converting conventional plants to combined-cycle units is a government priority.
A combined-cycle power plant produces up to 50% more electricity from the same fuel than a traditional simple cycle power plant. This is because waste heat from a gas turbine is rerouted to the nearby steam turbine to generate power.
