Dubai, UAE: Dubai Electricity and Water Authority (DEWA) has announced that it has completed 53% of the M-Station expansion project. The M-Station is reportedly the largest power production and water desalination plant in the UAE. DEWA said that it completed 3.9 million safe man-hours without any injuries.

According to the announcement, DEWA is set to inaugurate two gas turbine generators on May  31, 2017, which will be followed by the addition of two heat recovery steam turbine generators and one back-pressure steam turbine on April 30, 2018. The new additions, the announcement said, will increase the plant’s thermal efficiency from 82.4% to 85.8%, which reportedly is considered to be one of the highest thermal-efficiency rates in the world.

The announcement revealed that H.E. Saeed Mohammed Al Tayer, MD & CEO of DEWA, was briefed by representatives from Siemens on the project, including its operational process and completion, and they were joined by Nasser Lootah, Executive Vice President of Generation at DEWA, and Mansoor Al Suwaidi, Vice President for Projects Generation at DEWA. The utility said that it has appointed Mott MacDonald as the consultancy company of the project.

Launched in 2013 at a cost of AED 10.15 billion, the total cost of M-Station, the utility informed, will be AED 11.62 billion, with the estimated cost of the expansion project being AED 1.47 billion. The project, the utility said, will be completed and delivered by end of April 2018.

Providing details of the project, DEWA revealed that the expansion project includes new power generation units, with a capacity of 700MW to be added to the current capacity of the station to eventually produce 2,760MW by 2018. Its current total capacity, the utility added, is 2,060MW of electricity and 140 million imperial gallons of water per day (MIGD).

Revealing further details, DEWA said that the M-Station is equipped with the latest and most advanced technological systems, including six Siemens (F) model gas turbines with a capacity of 234MW each, six heat recovery steam turbine generators and three back-pressure steam turbines with a capacity of 218MW each, to provide 2060MW of electricity. It added that the desalination cost is AED 3.95 billion using 8 desalination units with multi-stage flash distillation (MSF) technology, with a capacity of 17.5 million MIGD for each unit, with a total of 140 million gallons per day.