My Adventure with INP

After about 15 months of basic and detail engineering in the office of a major customer in Vienna, the journey began. The target was a combined cycle gas and steam plant in the southeast of Malta.

The small, southern Mediterranean, Republic of Malta consists of three inhabited islands (Malta, Gozo and Comino). Malta was occupied by Britain for 164 years and only released to independence in 1964. The influence of the British is still clearly felt on the islands. For example, people drive on the left in Malta just like in England; also English is the second official language and the typical English cuisine is represented in Malta. This makes Malta particularly popular with tourists and students, because here you can brush up on your English skills while enjoying many beautiful sights along the way.

This power plant in Malta provides the entire island's power supply with three gas-fired turbines, each with a waste heat boiler and a downstream steam turbine.

Our major customer from Vienna took over the construction of the power plant as well as the integration of the individual components such as the gas and steam turbines. In the area of control technology, our major customer was also responsible for the BoP (balance of plant) area. This includes the integration of the gas and steam turbines into the SPPA T3000 control system. Furthermore, the electrical engineering, the boiler control and the regulations of the numerous auxiliary systems such as water treatment and cooling water were programmed in the control system.

My job was to support process control commissioning during power plant construction. Here, for example, pumps and pressure transmitters (referred to as actuators and sensors in the whole) must be incorporated into the control system. Furthermore, I was responsible for the administrative activities around T3000 during the commissioning. In this case, for example, the connections between the gas and steam turbines had to be connected to the control system and a data exchange for the power plant operator had to be implemented. The special feature of the system was that it was right on the sea and for me it was the first combined cycle gas and steam plant.

But the island life was also very interesting to me. Who else can say that they work where others spend their holidays? Especially on the weekends you could really enjoy the sights in peace or stroll along the beach in the summer. In addition to enjoying the beautiful "holiday life", work was of course not neglected. But here too I have only gained positive experiences.

So if you do not have a specific holiday destination, I can only recommend to fly to Malta once, rent a car there and explore the island(s).