Siemens plant in Berlin celebrates completion of the world's largest gas turbine.

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5 May 2007

The world's largest and most powerful gas turbine was loaded onto an inland waterway barge in Berlin on May 3 and started its journey to Irsching in Bavaria. Shipment by barge and then on a low loader will take approximately 20 days. The power pack with the designation "SGT5-8000H", built by Siemens Power Generation (PG) at its manufacturing plant in Huttenstrasse in Berlin, is 13 meters long, five meters high, and weighs over 440 metric tons.

To test the prototype turbine Siemens in cooperation with E.ON is building an experimental power plant in Irsching in the vicinity of Ingolstadt. The new gas turbine will set benchmarks in terms of output, efficiency, life-cycle costs, emissions and operational flexibility. Its capacity of 340 megawatts (MW) is approximately equivalent to that of 1,100 Porsche 911 automobiles or 13 jumbo jet engines. Following the test phase the gas turbine plant will be extended to form a high-efficiency combined cycle power plant where it will maximize overall plant performance: 530 MW and a maximum efficiency of over 60 percent - the previous best was 58 percent. The two-percent-point higher efficiency will save fuel and at the same time reduce CO2 emissions in Irsching by approximately 40,000 metric tons per annum.

"The output of this turbine is sufficient to provide electricity for the entire population of a city the size of Hamburg," said Dr. Wolf-Dietrich Krüger, head of the Gas Turbines subdivision at PG. Approximately 250 Siemens technicians and engineers worked on this latest development. A further 500 employees were involved in production of the prototype of the new machine. Siemens is investing a total of approximately EUR550 million in machine development, and construction, financing and validation of the power plant. First firing of the new turbine in Irsching is scheduled for November 2007. Following successful trial operation the plant will be taken over by E.ON Kraftwerke in 2011.

Gas turbines are a unique combination of classic heavy mechanical engineering and ultramodern manufacturing technology. Miniscule parts and parts weighing several tons - in total more than 7,000 individual parts - are assembled together using the most advanced methods with the precision of a watchmaker. The Siemens technicians and engineers require several months for the production of a gas turbine. Above all the turbine blades and vanes play a decisive role. They are ultimately responsible for the turbine's efficiency. Advanced turbine blades and vanes are masterpieces of engineering, uniting a maximum of precision and performance. The blades and vanes deployed in Siemens latest generation of gas turbines can readily handle temperatures of almost 1,500 degrees Celsius, thanks to their perfected air cooling.

Over 550 gas turbines have to date been dispatched from the Siemens manufacturing plant in the German capital. They have been delivered to customers in more than 60 countries around the globe.