First Gas Turbine Delivered to New VERBUND Power Plant in Mellach

Today saw the delivery of the first of two gas turbines to the power plant site of the VERBUND power plant currently being constructed in Mellach. Together with the steam turbine and the generator, the gas turbine forms the core of the new VERBUND power plant that will start operations at the end of 2011 with an installed capacity of 832 megawatt (MW) of electricity and up to 400 MW of district heating. The gas turbine has been manufactured in the Berlin Siemens factory and has a weight of more than 300 tons and a length of 13 meters. The transportation, for which it was necessary to partially dismantle the turbine, was carried out via the Rhein-Main-Danube canal to Linz and thereafter transported to Mellach via a special road transporter.

"With the construction of the combine cycle gas turbine power plant in Mellach, VERBUND is investing in the most modern and efficient thermal power plant technology. When in operation, CCGT Mellach will replace several thermal power plants that have been decommissioned in the past years," says Anton Smolak, Managing Director of VERBUND’s thermal power subsidiary Austrian Thermal Power. CCGT Mellach will form the backbone of power supply security in the industrialized province of Styria and, by means of the highly efficient use of steam for district heating, will offer the possibility of a sustainable improvement in the air quality for the metropolitan area of the Styrian provincial capital of Graz. VERBUND is investing 550 million Euro in the CCGT Mellach project.
VERBUND-Kraftwerk ist bisher größter Auftrag für Siemens Österreich

The VERBUND power plant is Siemens Austria's largest contract to date
"The power plant contract in Mellach is the largest one to date in the history of Siemens Austria. We are proud that, alongside the delivery of the main components, we have been able to take on the responsibility for the complete planning, engineering and project management for this power plant using Austrian engineering services," says Gunter Kappacher, energy chairman of Siemens AG Austria and the person responsible for the energy business in the Central Eastern Europe region.

For more than 100 years, turbines or turbine blades have been manufactured in the more than 130,000 square meters of manufacturing plant of Siemens in Berlin. Turbine blades are the most important components of a gas turbine. Some 2,500 blades are assembled in one single turbine. It is upon these that the efficiency of the entire power plant depends. Siemens’ combined cycle gas turbine power plants are currently achieving record efficiency levels of around 59 percent. High degrees of efficiency are important to be able to save fuel, to conserve resources and to reduce CO2 emissions. The Mellach power plant is going to achieve a complete fuel utilization rate of around 80 percent through the extraction of district heating.

The Siemens gas turbine SGT5-4000F is a high-tech product that uniquely combines classic heavy mechanical engineering with ultramodern manufacturing. During the assembly, components weighing several tons and tiny components – more than 7000 individual parts in total – are brought together with watchmaker precision using the most advanced methods. A single air-cooling system makes it possible to release the turbine blade temperatures of up to 1,500 degrees centigrade that prevail in the turbines.