The US’ Black & Veatch has been appointed by Saudi Electricity Company (SEC) as the owner’s engineer for the project to convert the Qassim II and III power plants into combined-cycle facilities.

The project will convert 12 oil-fired simple-cycle power turbines to combined-cycle. The project will expand the capacity of the Qassim power plants by a total of 360MW.

The project is the latest of several initiatives from SEC to convert existing power plants to combined-cycle facilities, which improves efficiency and increases capacity of the existing plants.

MEED recently reported that a consortium of Spain’s Initec Energia and the local Saudi Services for Electro Mechanical Works (SSEM) had submitted a low bid for the contract to convert the PP9 power plant in Saudi Arabia to combined-cycle.

The Initec Energia/SSEM partnership submitted a total lump-sum bid of SR1.2bn ($320m) to convert the plant in Riyadh to combined-cycle, which will increase its capacity by about 240MW. SEC received prices on 31 March from four bidders for the engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) contract.

The PP9 scheme was built as a 1,200MW power plant between 1995 and 2003, and following a couple of expansions, the capacity reached 3,500MW by 2009.