Germany’s third-largest utility EnBW has commissioned MAN Diesel & Turbo to plan and build, upon investment approval, a gas engine-driven combined heat and power plant (CHP) in Stuttgart. Commissioning is scheduled for 2018.
Located at Stuttgart-Gaisburg, just east of the city centre, the CHP will be driven by three MAN type 20V35/44G gas engines and will supply electricity as well as 30 MW of district heating.
For MAN, the project is its second engine CHP plant in Germany and further established high-efficiency gas engine technology on the manufacturer’s home turf.
“The new plant, consisting of boilers, heat storage and gas engines, will serve to replace a mainly coal-fired thermal power plant at the same location and has a particularly high fuel utilisation rate due to its overall efficiency of more than 85% (without tolerance). The switch from coal to gas is meant to curb emissions by up to 60,000 tonnes per year.
At the Gainsburg site, EnBW has been generating heat and electricity for the Stuttgart area for over 60 years. Investment in the new gas engine power plant is set to significantly reduce site emissions and improve improving the air quality in the city, EnBW project manager Diana van den Bergh pointed out. As for implementing its latest CHP project, EnBW will first obtain all required permits and will take FID only thereafter, “provided the applicable regulatory framework allows for an investment at the time,” she explained.
Gas engines ‘ideal’ for district heating supply
With more and more renewables contributing to Germany’s overall electricity supply, flexible gas engine plants with cogeneration are seen as “the perfect solution for security of supply, efficiency and the reduction of emissions,” according to Wayne Jones, MAN board member for global sales and after sales.
Using gas engines for CHP, combined with heat storage, allows the power plant operator to decouple electricity and district heating supply, allowing him to respond flexibly to pricing signals. When it comes to supply of district heating, large gas engines are “superior to other generation technologies of this plant size,” MAN stated with reference to a study by the University of Duisburg-Essen. The 10MW 35/44G gas engine used in Gaisburg has a power to heat ratio close to one, “ideal for CHP plants.”
Augsburg-based MAN Diesel & Turbo recently launched a scalable concept for gas engine plants with cogeneration – reaching from 7 MW up to any size. A high degree of standardisation, allows for short planning and delivery times.