ABB has won orders from Ansaldo Energia, Italy’s largest supplier, installer and service provider of power generation, to supply a plant automation system and substation expansion for the new Ain Djasser III gas-fired power plant in the northern province of Batna, Algeria. The plant is operated by Sociéte Algérienne de Production de l’Electricité, Algeria’s largest power generation company.
ABB will provide a distributed control system for the 340 MW open cycle power unit based on the Symphony ® Plus total plant automation platform. The solution includes the platform’s S+ Operations human machine interface and a Symphony Harmony rack I/O (Input/Output) based turbine control system.
In a separate contract, Ansaldo Energia has selected ABB to expand the 220 kV air-insulated substation that feeds the power produced by the Ain Djasser plants into the Algerian transmission grid. ABB supplied the original substation in 2008 and will expand it to cope with the large increase in power when the third plant starts production. The solution includes a wide range of high voltage products, as well as substation protection and control. ABB is responsible for the design, engineering, supply, and commissioning of both orders, and will execute them on a fast-track basis to enable the plant to start producing energy as early as 2016.
Ain Djasser 3 is part of a large-scale investment programme that the country’s public utility Sonelgaz (of which Sociéte Algérienne de Production de l’Electricité is a subsidiary), is pursuing to almost double electricity generation within the next three to four years. Algeria’s power consumption has been increasing by about 10 % annually in recent years.
