New Thermal Power Plant Investment in Antalya

Dear Energy Professional, Dear Colleagues,

Your writer receives growing number of news alerts from Antalya summer resort for new energy investment of a local investor for a Combined cycle power plant with 827.8 MWe power generation at 35 km north of Antalya city center just after Organized industrial zone, on the Highway between Selimiye and Kovanlik villages.

Your writer is always happy to get such news on new energy investments in the local energy market, provided that they are environmentally friendly, they have completed all obligations for Environmental Impact Assessment Reports, received their license from the Local Regulatory Board, designed by local engineering companies, fabricated in the local fabrication plants, installed by our local contractors, commissioned and supervised by our local engineering power, operated by our own staff, and regularly checked by our own labor force in programmed maintenance.

Since Turkey paid huge amount of compensation after arbitration practice in the international platforms in the past, we all know that there will be no more arbitration clause in the new tenders. New tenders will not cover international arbitration, since Turkish public institutes have faced difficulty in finding and paying competent lawyers within public purchasing procedures, and the available public lawyers in the board could not handle that international arbitration activity. In short we shall not see any international arbitration in the new tenders, hence it will reduce our bankability in project financing.

The good side of that is Turkey will need local financing, and local contracting, local engineering.

Your writer sincerely feels that our local investors deserve all our support to complete those new power plant investments. They deserve since they risk their own property in order to get proper "Corporate Financing" at reasonable interest rates, and payment terms.

Hence your writer also tries to avoid them to make any technical mistakes in their power plant basic design, furthermore to warn them not to make incorrect selection of the necessary equipment, wishes them to operate the plant for many years, to generate electricity which will push our economic prosperity.



We understand that they considered first simple cycle combination comprising 2 each Siemens SGT5-4000F for application to EIA.

Initial location was next to existing Organized Industrial Zone. Since they were supposed to pay 3% over their naturalgas price to OIZ administration, they decided to avoid that surcharge and replaced the location, and moved to more north direction, also changed their initial design from simple cycle to combined cycle.

Simple cycle operation needs almost no or limited small amount of water in the operation, so that is completely in compliance with no harm to nearby environment, nor to the ongoing agricultural activities. However simple cycle operation at high cost of naturalgas is not feasible, we all know that.



It is our humble feeling that investor has used minimum or no local engineering, nor any design software, nor any third party consultancy.

We understand that they agreed all they have received from the OEM supplier, it is like almost complete surrender to the supplier, with no or limited evaluation within their limited engineering capability.

However their license is based on 827.8 MWe electricity generating Combined cycle power plant and that project activity is almost 0.7% complete as of January 2008 as stated in the regulatory board web site.

It is too difficult for your humble writer to understand that mismatch. We now understand that this plant is not a simple cycle but a combined cycle power plant, designed to consume huge amount of underground water, which is too vital for the nearby agricultural fields. That is a great adverse impact to the environment.



If you design your combined cycle power plant cooling system to water cooling, which quite cheap at initial cost, then you need huge amount of water in years to come.

Investors are to be too cleaver not to harm the environment. In this case, your writer in his humble capacity, would be advising the investor to use air-cooling systems, although they are a bid more expensive in upfront investment cost, but in the long run you do not harm the agricultural fields nearby, and live in peace with your neighboring villagers.



There is only one restriction to be checked. Air cooled cooling towers should not interfere with airplane landing routes. We know that airplanes land from seaside at Antalya International airport, and take off route is quite far from plant site. Anyhow it should be double checked if selection is appropriate.

I hope that above explanation is sufficient in nature at this time, and I will be too pleased to receive your comments