Ansaldo Energia has been working in Tunisia since 1994, when the company built its first power plant in the country, the Rades 2x170 MW thermoelectric plant. Since then Ansaldo Energia has successfully completed two combined cycle power plants, Sousse C (2014) and Sousse Dv (2017), with a power of 424 MW each. Ansaldo Energia continues to work on these plants under long-term maintenance contracts, performing maintenance work in the two power plants in Sousse, the Ghannouch plant and schedule service of the Rades B plant.
Ansaldo Energia's historic presence in Tunisia and successful partnership with Société Tunisienne de l'Électricité et du Gaz (STEG) was crowned with the completion and start of operation of the first unit in the Borj El Amri / Mornaguia thermoelectric power plant. In 2018, STEG awarded Ansaldo Energia a turnkey contract for engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) of a gas-fired open-cycle 625 MW thermoelectric power plant in Mornaguia, southwest of Tunis. The plant features two AE94.3A gas turbines, with their two generators and auxiliary systems, all produced in Ansaldo Energia's Genoa plant. A Service Agreement (LTSA) is in place covering all maintenance and service work in the plant.
Ansaldo Energia got to work as soon as the contract went into effect, and the initial implementation phase was accelerated due to the urgent need to satisfy the demand for energy in Tunisia. Under the agreements signed with the customer in 2018, the country's power grid was to have an additional 300 MW of power before the summer of 2019, which meant completing the first unit of the power plant in record time: an ambitious challenge in view of the extensive civil works required. The hard work and technical know-how of the people involved in erection and commissioning allowed the project to stay on schedule, and the plant was officially inaugurated and started up on 13 June, 2019. In the summer of 2019 electricity consumption reached a record-breaking peak of 4.250 MW, and Ansaldo Energia made an important contribution to supplying this demand. A team of Italian and Tunisian engineers worked on the site for 10 months, forming a single team jointly with STEG and local partners.
The second half of the project programme was slowed down by the global COVID-19 emergency. Authorisation was obtained to continue working non-stop even during the lockdown of March through May 2020 in order to achieve priority goals guaranteeing sufficient electricity generation to satisfy demand in Tunisia: the new electrical power plant was to produce 625 MW of power by the summer of 2020. On 26 June 2020 Ansaldo Energia signed the Industrial Operation, and the PAC was signed on 10 November 2020, perfectly on schedule.
