Power for the future Hitachi Power Europe

POWER FOR THE FUTURE

As a leading specialist in energy plant construction, Hitachi Power Europe benefits from the growing demand for electricity and the boom in power plant construction across the world.

Based in the traditional coal mining area of Germany, and backed by the global Hitachi Group, Hitachi Power Europe designs, constructs and retrofits fossil-fired power plants. The company, known as Babcock-Hitachi Europe until 2006, is considered a market and technology leading provider of cutting-edge, ecologically sound and economic plants. They are a preferred partner for all key components of power plants and play a prime role in securing the supply of electricity in market economies worldwide.

Hitachi Power Europe’s history goes back to the establishment of Deutsche Babcock & Wilcox Dampfkesselwerke AG in Berlin in 1898. In 2003 Babcock-Hitachi K.K., a subsidiary of Hitachi, Ltd., acquired the power engineering business and the know-how in steam generation and combined-cycle power plants of the former Babcock Borsig Group, Oberhausen. Following complete takeover by the Hitachi Group, the company was renamed Hitachi Power Europe GmbH (HPE) in 2006.

The Hitachi Group has revenues of approx. USD 112.2 billion and a 360,000 workforce worldwide. HPE is responsible for the markets in Europe, Africa, Russia and India within the group, as well as being the Centre of Competence for the electrification of lignite / anthracite.

Full range of solutions for fossil fuels

With a track record going back over a century, HPE has extensive know-how on fossil-fired power plants. The offer ranges from the all-in Power Train to the key components such as utility steam generators, environmental engineering equipment, steam turbines and pulverizers.

The company will take on every facet of the operation, from preparing approval applications through every aspect of technical planning, construction, assembly and commissioning to upstream and downstream integration. The engineering capabilities cover all disciplines: plant, civil and process engineering, mechanical equipment, electrical and control systems as well as piping engineering. HPE has its own manufacturing facilities for all principal components through its subsidiaries of Donges SteelTec GmbH, Meeraner Dampfkesselbau GmbH and Babcock Fertigungszentrum GmbH.

HPE develops, designs and supplies steam generators for unit capacities up to and over 1,100 Mwe with 300 bar plus pressures, 600°C live steam temperatures and reheater temperatures up to 620°C for all the available

fossil fuels. References include over 370,000 megawatts of installed power plant capacity set up since 1970.

References across Europe

The highly successful and globally deployed H-25 / H-15 gas turbines from parent company Hitachi are the optimum solution for maximum reliability, efficiency and economy. Designed as a heavy duty machine (30 MW rating class), over 120 Hitachi gas turbines are in service throughout the world, proving dependable under continuous operation, particularly for plants with cogeneration/district heating supply. H25 projects in Europe recently carried out include upgrading work for Matra Kraftwerke AG in Hungary (2 x H25), a new power plant for E.ON Energy Projects and E.ON Hungary (H25) and a new power plant for Wuppertaler Stadtwerke AG (2 x H25).

Joint venture in India

In August 2010 HPE set up a joint venture with BGR Energy Systems Ltd. in Chennai, India. The facility for producing 660–1,000 MW class utility steam generators in Tamil Nadu, due for completion in 2012, will deliver up to four highly efficient utility steam generators (3,000 MW in total) a year. It is envisaged that some 2,100 skilled employees will be working in the production by 2017. Modern coal power plants attain efficiencies of up to 46 per cent – against average efficiency figures of 30 per cent for the world and 38 per cent in the EU. This is achieved by “supercritical” utility steam generators (300+ bar steam pressure and 600°C+ steam temperature), which will be built by the joint venture. The Indian power plant sector is an important future market for HPE: with a 1.2 billion population, the Indian sub-continent’s electricity generating need is set to double to over 330,000 MW by 2017.

String of new plants in Africa

HPE is also carrying out a major installation in partnership with Hitachi Power Africa (HPA), where the fixing of the first boiler column at the Kusile site in South Africa took place last November. Customer Eskom has ordered six utility steam generators sited some 100 km east of Johannesburg, which will have an overall output in excess of 4,800 MW (el.). This is the same output as that at the Medupi power plant, for which HPE and HPA are also supplying the utility steam generators. In Kusile 2,700 jobs have already been created for building the utility steam generator, and the training and qualification programme has trained 322 apprentices – with twothirds coming from Mpumalanga Province. Once finished, the new utility steam generators at Medupi and Kusile will be the most up-to-date of their kind in South Africa with efficiencies 15 per cent up on the average for power plants in the country.

Currently a quarter of the world population is still without electricity, and with energy consumption set to rise rapidly, experts predict a doubling of demand by 2030. In the EU alone it is expected that 300,000 MW (almost half of the current installed capacity) will have to be replaced by 2020. With its extensive references, strong parent company and innovations like the installation of the first 50 per cent efficiency plant (planned for 2015), Hitachi Power Europe is exceptionally well placed to ‘power ahead’ in this growing market. n