The US’ GE has been awarded a contract to provide drive equipment for the 2,700MW Yanbu power plant, currently under construction on the Red Sea Coast.

GE’s Power Conversion Business will provide boiler feed pump motors and medium voltage drives to the German pump manufacturer KSB and the EPC consortium building the plant, consisting of South Korea’s Samsung Engineering and the local Al-Touki.

In addition to having a planned power capacity of 2,700MW, the Yanbu 3 facility will have capacity to desalinate up to 550,000 cubic metres a day (cm/d) of water. The client for the project is the Saline Water Conversion Corporation (SWCC).

The Samsung Engineering-led consortium was awarded the contract to build the power plant in December 2012. In mid-November 2012, South Korea’s Doosan was awarded the estimated $1bn contract to build the desalination component of the plant, which will have a capacity of 550,000 cm/d.

The plant is scheduled to be fully commissioned in 2016.