A senior executive for Electricite de France (EDF) said in Alkhobar that the company is working to build low-cost plants such as thermal and combined plants, a step that enabled the company to develop Al-Qurayyah Combined PP and raise its efficiency to 54.6 percent and generation capacity to 4,475 megawatts at 32° C.
Dominique Minière, group senior executive vice president of Nuclear and Thermal Power Plants Division for EDF, said that as the world's biggest electricity generator, the Paris-based company covers every aspect of the industry, from generation to trading and transmission grids. He said EDF builds on the expertise of its people, its research and development, and engineering skills. The company also counts on its experience as a leading industry operator and the attentive support of its customers to deliver competitive solutions that successfully reconcile economic growth with climate protection.
In an earlier statement to the Saudi Press Agency, Khalid Al-Tuaimi, deputy CEO of SEC for Electric Generation, said the Saudi Electricity Company (SEC) plans to raise operational efficiency from the current 34 percent to 40 percent by 2020.
He added the progress made by the SEC came as a result of long-term plans adopted by the company to raise efficiency of the power plants.
He said the company has also applied global standards and criteria supported by up-to-date technologies to carry out protective maintenance programs in a bid to raise its technical position.
Efforts are not limited to pre-emptive measures related to regular maintenance but also extended to make tests on the generation units after maintenance to verify performance on a continued basis and take necessary correction steps through the PI System, he said.
As a result of development processes in improving efficiency and operational performance of the generating stations in the last 16 years, the company managed to raise the generation capacity to 75,000 megawatts compared to 25,800 megawatts in 2000, he said.
Likewise, efficiency in the thermal plants improved to hit 37.5 percent by the end of September 2016 compared to 36.5 percent in the previous year, he added.
The company’s improvement expanded to cover 28 generating plants in all regions of the Kingdom, which are equipped with 692 generating units of which 116 are combined and 40 steam-based units.
Additionally, the company’s efforts in improving thermal efficiency in 2016 saved 15 million barrels of equivalent fuel whose market value is SR368 million as well as 13 million barrels of diesel.
All these efforts are designed to lessen dependence on fuel through the exploitation of the Kingdom’s available resources including construction of the one of the biggest power plant in the world using integrated solar combined cycle (ISCC) system as the case with Dhabaa and Wad-Al-Shamal solar plants with their capacity reaching 43 and 50 megawatts, respectively, he pointed out.

Source : Arab News