WASHINGTON (Army News Service, June 1, 2009) -- The Army Corps of Engineers' Gulf Region Division teamed up with Iraqi engineers and through their collaborative efforts brought an additional 200 megawatts per hour of power to the al-Qudas power plant located 25 miles north of Baghdad.
At a recent blogger roundtable, Navy Cmdr. John Szatkowski, Corps of Engineers project manager, and Hussein Ali Aiyah an Iraqi engineer, discussed the significance and the increasing Iraqi role in power supply projects.
The al-Qudas Power Plant helps provide power to the national grid and now generates five percent of the electricity used by Iraqi people. Currently, Iraq's power is on eight hours out of every 24 and uses about 12,000 megawatts per hour according to Aiyah.
As the power system continues to grow, the number of times per day when power is available to families is varied.
"About two hours on, then three or four off, then two hours on," explained Aiyah. "Next year, next summer, the goal is about 16 hours daily, and by 2012, full-time."
Another feature of the Qudas expansion project was the high level of involvement among all of the parties. U.S. troops, the Iraqi government, local engineers and American contractors came together to procure gas turbines, construct and test the plant, assist the power plant operators, and perform other support roles.
"The project was everything to support their operation, as well as a firefighting system," said Szatkowski. "And we have a planned control system, which allows the units to be operated remotely, from the central control room, not just from their local control stations."
The integrated work environment became an empowering experience for the Iraqis.
"When I first got to the project, some of the guys were timid," said Szatkowski. "But after working together over time, they realized that they had the brainpower and the drive to do just about anything they needed to do."
The future of Iraqi power supply will see less and less American involvement. "The Qudas expansion project was the last of the U.S.-funded projects using the Iraqi relief and reconstruction funding," said Szatkowski.
"There are 56 additional gas combustion turbine units that the Iraqis are looking to get installed at various power plants throughout Iraq. And that's going to be totally funded by the Iraqi government," he said.
(Carroll Kim is an intern with the Office of the Chief of Public Affairs.)
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