Alstom’s unit in Hungary has successfully completed modernisation of unit 8 of the Dunamenti gas-fired power plant, owned by Gaz de France Suez, and one of the country’s biggest power plants. The modernisation project awarded to Alstom in 2008 included the retrofit and upgrade of the complete steam turbine island and the associated balance of plant at unit 8 of the plant to match new steam data following the installation of a gas turbine from another vendor. The project started in April 2009 and has been successfully completed with the commissioning of the retrofitted unit 8 in July this year. It has contributed to the increased output of unit 8 from 215 MW to above 400 MW and the jump in efficiency by more than 20 % – from 36 % to 57 %. The efficiency increase also results in a substantial reduction of CO2 emissions from the plant.

This project was a brown field investment, whereby the steam turbine island unit no 8 was modernised by using the power plant’s existing infrastructure. The six conventional 215 MW steam turbines at the plant including the related condensers and feedwater heaters were originally supplied by Alstom companies. Within the scope of this project, Alstom replaced the high-pressure steam turbine in unit 8 with a high performance new module and upgraded the medium and low-pressure cylinders, the generator and the balance of plant – thus enabling the turbo group and its auxiliaries to operate in a highly efficient combined cycle mode.

Dunamenti is located near Budapest and consists of 6 x 215 MW steam turbine units and two other combined cycle and cogeneration units. The plant has a total capacity of 1736 MW. The retrofit of unit 8 labelled ‘G3’ was part of a bigger rehabilitation programme undertaken by Gaz de France Suez to reduce the environmental impacts of their plant.