The new facility, located in Chattanooga, Tennessee, results from an investment of approximately $300m. It will eventually create around 350 jobs.
Philippe Joubert, president of Alstom Power, said: “Our new Chattanooga factory dramatically enhances Alstom’s ability to build and retrofit power generation equipment for customers in North America and beyond.
“Coupled with Alstom’s recent investments in carbon capture and sequestration (CCS) and wind turbine production in the US, this unit represents another important step in executing our clean power strategy.”
Alstom claims that the Chattanooga factory is equipped with a balancing facility that allows the manufacture of the largest turbines in the world, the Arabelle 1,700MW class nuclear steam turbine.
The turbo-generator components will also be manufactured in this facility. Its size is particularly relevant to the nuclear industry, both for retrofitting existing equipment to make it more efficient or building the equipment that will be needed for the next generation of power plants, the company said.
The facility features an on-site barge dock with a lifting capacity of upto 1,000 tons. It was expanded in line with the requirements for Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) Gold certification – a US benchmark for high performance green buildings.
Alstom already operates turbine manufacturing facilities notably in France, Germany, Switzerland and China.
