Istanbul’s newest airport required uninterrupted, flawless power before it could really take off. Leading Turkish generator manufacturer, Aksa Power Generation, took up the challenge and delivered one of the biggest global generator set projects of the year.
Currently under construction and with an arrival date of October 2018, Istanbul Grand Airport (IGA) is set to become the world’s largest air transport hub.
The state-of-the-art site is being developed to solve a current lack of capacity in the city’s airports. Once open, it will welcome more than 200 million passengers per year and serve 15 airlines flying to 350 global destinations.
The airport will ultimately provide four passenger terminals, each with a huge demand for lighting, heating, air conditioning and passenger services. It will also be equipped with the necessary technology and infrastructure to co-ordinate hundreds of thousands of flights a year.
With such a substantial energy demand on the horizon, it’s no surprise that a dependable power supply was high on the airport’s list of requirements. The IGA team reached out to leading power suppliers and, after a competitive tendering process, named Turkish generator set brand Aksa Power Generation as its sole power supplier.
Since manufacturing its first generator in 1984, Aksa has quickly grown to become a dominant force in the generator set market and is among Turkey’s largest 200 industrial companies and exporters.
The company manufactures gas, diesel and natural gas powered generator sets along with marine generating sets and lighting towers. Its impressive facilities include one of the world’s largest factories, which measures some 100,000 square metres.
With its impressive manufacturing capacity and proven track record, Aksa had all the right attributes to become IGA’s trusted power partner. And the company excelled itself by designing a power solution as ambitious and pioneering as the airport itself. The solution consists of 45 x AP2500 generator sets, powered by Perkins® 4016-61TRG3 engines and will have the capacity to deliver more than 100 MW of prime power.
“The power capacity of the installation will be comparable to a medium-scale power plant. That makes it one of the biggest global generator set projects of 2017. It will be our responsibility to meet the airport’s power requirements with generators that provide the best, uninterrupted, flawless power. They will work in synchronicity with the main electricity supply ensuring the airport’s passengers and wider operations don’t have their power cut short.” Alper Peker, Aksa CEO |
The Perkins 4016-61TRG3 engines featured in the installation will each provide 2500 kVA generator output from a 61 litre displacement. They have exceptional power-to-weight ratios and a compact design that makes them easy to transport and install.
As well as delivering reliable, heavy duty performance, the engines also provide Aksa with the versatility to synchronise the generators and increase their total capacity whenever that’s needed.
The project is on such an industry-leading scale that Aksa has ten engineers and 30 technicians working directly on it. The company also provides 24/7 service support to the customer to give them total peace of mind that should there be an unexpected issue with any of the generator sets, they’ll be back in operation in the optimum time.
On such a large, high-profile project, only the best components were selected to meet the client’s understandably demanding requirements.
“Choosing the right engine was extremely critical for us and Perkins engines provided us with the perfomance and reliablity that we needed,” concluded Mr. Peker.