The construction of a new combined heat and power plant with a total installed capacity of 872 MW began in the autumn of 2011 and, despite the difficult terrain, it was completed exactly in line with the plan. “The cooperation of the Czech and the Turkish corporations has proven very successful; not only did we meet the schedule but we also managed to significantly reduce the originally expected capital expenditures,” said Tomáš Pleskač, Foreign Assets Division Director. Due to a special permit granted by the local Ministry of Energy, the power plant began to receive payments for the electricity supplied in the grid. Just this factor alone allowed us to bring in additional cost savings in the order of hundreds of millions of Czech crowns. Moreover, we have also generated cost savings by reducing the related project financing costs and by consuming less gas than planned during the start-up phase.
Numerous obstacles had to be overcome during the construction phase, in particular due to the difficult terrain – the power plant is namely situated on a beach, less than a kilometre from the Mediterranean Sea. Therefore, the sand beach surface had to be stabilized by embedding 1,100 concrete piles up to 35 meters deep and by filling another 10,000 holes with gravel piles 20 meters deep, with all these piles reducing the risk of underbed faults during earthquakes. However, due to its unique position, the power plant can be cooled directly by seawater. The seawater inlet pipe has been laid for 1.5 km along the sea bottom. Components for the power plant have been supplied from all over the world – generators from the USA, gas turbines from France and steam turbines from the Czech Republic, and the boiler from South Korea. Apart from the power plant itself, 34 km of power lines have also been built to lead out the output power and 17 km of a gas connection pipeline.
The CEZ Group launched its business activities in Turkey in 2008 by signing a memorandum of strategic cooperation with the Akkök Group. Their joint venture, Akenerji, operates two CHP plants, one wind power plant and eight hydropower plants with a total installed capacity of more than 1.5 GW. The production corporation has for two years in a row generated record-high operating profits (CZK 1.8 billion in 2013). The distribution business has also been successful in Turkey, where ČEZ together with Akkök supplies electricity to 1.4 million customers in one of the most industrialized regions in northwest Turkey.
