EnerjiSA to open Bandırma plant in July

EnerjiSA, a joint venture of Turkey’s Sabancı Group and Austria’s Verbund, is speeding up the building process on its natural-gas combined-cycle plant in Bandırma.

The foundation for the facility was laid Oct. 22 last year in the industrialized town in the northwestern city of Balıkesir.

Güler Sabancı, the chairwoman of Sabancı Holding, and Ahmet Dördüncü, the chief executive officer of the group, both went to Bandırma to examine the power plant last week and have decided to start generation two days earlier than planned.

In response to Sabancı’s question about the launch date of electricity generation, EnerjiSA Project Manager Veli Balat first said electricity generation would start Aug. 1, 2010. Dördüncü asked for it to be ready July 30, a request Balat promised to fulfill. The change will yield an additional 4 million euros in turnover for EnerjiSA.

If the Bandırma Natural-Gas Combined-Cycle Plant, which will cost 660 million euros, begins to operate on time, it will bring self-confidence to the company by allowing EnerjiSA to “prove its maturity,” Sabancı said.

With the launch of the Bandırma plant in 2010, Dördüncü added, Sabancı Holding will become a major actor in the natural-gas sector.

The only plant of its kind in Turkey, the Bandırma facility will reap 700 million euros in turnover by generating 920 megawatts of electricity annually. The daily turnover of the plant will be nearly 2 million euros.

EnerjiSA has invested a total of 660 million euros in the power-plant project, including 500 million euros for machine and equipment, said Selahattin Hakman, the energy group chairman at Sabancı Holding. This investment budget includes road and infrastructure studies as well as land and credit costs.

Cheaper electricity generation

While other natural-gas combined-cycle plants have efficiency rates of at most 52.5 percent when converting 100 units of natural gas into electricity, this ratio will reach 59 percent or even 61 percent at the Bandırma facility. As a result, EnerjiSA will be able to generate electricity 10 percent more cheaply than other power plants in Turkey.

The electricity generated at the Bandırma plant will supply 2.5 percent of Turkey’s overall electricity needs.

Planning to reach 5,000 megawatts of electricity-generation capacity by 2015, EnerjiSA aims to have a 10 percent share in the market. Currently generating 450 megawatts of electricity, EnerjiSA has seven hydroelectric power-plant projects in the works.

The group, which has a thermal-power investment in Tufanbeyli and a wind-energy investment in Çanakkale, will reach 2,000 megawatts of electricity production by the end of 2012, a figure that will rise to 5,000 megawatts in 2015.

EnerjiSA is a fifty-fifty percent joint venture of Sabancı and Verbund, one of the leading companies in Europe and Austria’s largest generator of electricity. The weight of energy in Sabancı Holding will climb from 15 percent to 20 percent with these investments.

The firm, which won the tender for Başkent Dağıtım, an electricity-distribution firm, has 3 million subscribers. Sabancı Holding aims to add 3 million more subscribers with some new tenders in the upcoming period.

According to Hakman, the firm is interested in the tender for the distributor Uludağ Dağıtım, which distributes electricity to the cities of Bursa, Bilecik and Çanakkale.

Though Sabancı Holding aims to become an energy leader and the group is also interested in nuclear energy, it did not offer a bid on Turkey’s first nuclear power-plant tender. “Some changes may take place in nuclear energy laws. Then we may reevaluate the conditions,” said Hakman.

A hydroelectric power plant used for cooling purposes will also be constructed at the natural-gas power plant in Bandırma. Some 10,000 residences will benefit from this innovative hydroelectric facility.

Noting that Turkey’s decision to participate in the Kyoto Protocol was a correct one, Sabancı added: “However, the position we are in is not proper. We are positioned among the developed countries. Turkey has to go to Copenhagen on Dec. 10 well-prepared to negotiate on the protocol.”