June 2006 — The Siemens Industrial Solutions and Services (I&S) Group recently received an order from Voest Alpine Materials Handling, Austria, to deliver the electrical equipment for the complete ore transport systems between the plant's port facility in Al-Jubail and the Saudi Iron and Steel Company (Hadeed) steel plant. The order is valued at EUR 7.5 million.

The project will include ship unloaders, conveyors, stackers, and hoppers.

Siemens will deliver the complete power engineering and the automation and drive systems for the two ship unloaders, each of which will have an unloading capacity of 2800 tons per hour. The equipment package will include 4 kV medium-voltage switchgear units, transformers, the low-voltage power supply lines, and the variable speed drives in AFE (active front end) technology. The ship unloaders will be automated by Simatic S7-400 programmable controllers. Operator control and monitoring will be implemented based on WinCC. The electrical equipment will be accommodated in special E-houses with redundant, full air conditioning that allows operation at ambient temperatures up to 55°C. The E-houses will be installed at a height of roughly 40 meters, directly on the machine house with the crane main drives.

The conveyor between the port and the steel plant has an hourly transport capacity of 3000 tonnes. The scope of the Siemens electrical power engineering will comprise around 70 medium-voltage switchgear units, SF6-insulated 36 kV bays, and air insulated 4kV units, and 34/4 kV coupling transformers. The conveyor will be driven by eight 4 kV converter-feed motors with outputs from 270 kW to 800 kW.

The four stackers and eight hoppers at the steel plant will be supplied with electricity from a 4 kV medium-voltage switchgear unit that includes a transformer and low-voltage switchgear. Simatic S7-400 controllers will be used for automation. The stackers will be responsible for temporarily storing the ore in several 400-meter-long, 35-meter-wide sectors, while the hoppers will feed the material onto the conveyor belts.

All components will be largely preassembled, tested, and installed in the E-houses at Siemens. Installation and commissioning times on site will thus be reduced to a minimum. The equipment will be commissioned by February 2007.

Hadeed belongs to the Saudi Sabic Holding, Riyadh, and is the Gulf Region's leading producer of steel. Established in 1983 as a supplier of structural steel, it has an annual production capacity of around four million tonnes, including a growing share of cold- and hot-rolled flat products destined for local industry.

The Siemens Industrial Solutions and Services Group (I&S) is the integrator of systems and solutions for industrial and infrastructure facilities and global service provider for the plant and projects business covering planning, installation, operation and the entire life cycle. I&S uses the electrical and technical products of other Siemens Groups in order to enhance productivity and improve competitiveness of companies in the sectors of metallurgy, water treatment, pulp and paper, oil and gas, marine engineering, open-cast mining, airport logistics, postal automation, intelligent traffic systems and industrial services. In fiscal 2005 (to September 30) I&S employed a total of 31,700 people worldwide and achieved total sales of EUR 5.390 billion.