History and Objectives
In early 2000s by some research carried out by planning department in Tavanir Company, a Kerman centered-plan of establishing a combined cycle power plant was confirmed in order to develop electricity generation and mainly voltage stability in southeast area. The first scheme was based on six gas units with nominal capacity of 159 MW for each unit that later on was changed to eight units. Consequently, construction of the first phase consisting eight gas units with total 1272 MW of power output, in which two last units are owned by Islamic Development Bank due to using finance, was actually begun in 2001.
The plant was built through a contract between Iran Power Development Company, IPDC, and Mapna and also cooperation of its foreigner partner, Ansaldo Energia, as a part of The 30 Gas Turbines Project. The first and the last units were put into commercial service on July 7, 2001 and December 20, 2002, respectively. The gas turbines are Siemens model V94.2 sold to Iran by Ansaldo under the license of Siemens.
It is worth mentioning that the capability of Iranian contractor has been widely used so as to grow domestic technology of installation power plants.
The plant is situated on 20th kilometer of Kerman-Rafsanjan highway, in 120 hectares of land. Construction of steam section began on December 21, 2004 and the first unit was operated on March18, 2008. With making use of gas part, including eight units as mentioned above and steam part comprising four steam turbines, each with the same power as a gas turbine, the nominal capacity of the entire power plant will exceed 1900MW. Hence it is one of the biggest power plants in the country.
The main fuel is natural gas which first was entered to the plant through a pipeline from Sarkhoun Refinery and then this pipeline was connected to the global gas network of the country. The second fuel is diesel, which is transmitted via pipelines and is stored in twenty million-liter tanks. Fuel consumption is approximately 335 cubic meters of gas or 335 liters of diesel per MWh.
Construction of gas phase cost about 300 million Euros and almost twice for the steam phase.