FRANKFURT: Germany's Hesse state is seeking to reinstate an environmental licence that will allow a closed coal-fired power plant to be used as a capacity reserve in winter, its economics minister said on Tuesday.
E.ON's Staudinger 1 block near Frankfurt is the latest in a series of efforts to avoid capacity shortages after Germany switched off large nuclear units in 2011 to rely increasingly on renewable power. The cost is being borne by the public.
"The government is thinking about taking Staudinger 1 into cold reserve and I will be carrying out discussions with the environment ministry to this effect in the coming weeks," Hesse Economy Minister Florian Rentsch told reporters.
"We are concerned that shortfalls in secure production could endanger the stability of power transmission networks in the
Rhine-Main region," he added. The federal energy regulator told Reuters last month that the Staudinger 1 plant with its 250 megawatts capacity was in a region prone to potential grid bottlenecks.
There, south-bound wind power from northern Germany arrives, but often on cold days is not sufficient to meet demand.
The regulator plans to contract at least 2,500 megawatts (MW) in total in so-called capacity reserve and has vowed to meet an end-September deadline.
Staudinger 1's environmental licence expired in April after the plant had been producing electricity for 48 years.
Consumers would ultimately have to foot the bill for possible environmental upgrades as well as to keep a workforce available at the unit. Network operator TenneT would pass on the costs via the grid fees it collects from its customers.
Last winter, Germany's power network came under pressure once, although Staudinger 1 was still online. The problem of potential energy shortages will remain for years as nuclear plants in southern Germany are closed quicker than grids are revamped.
Comments
Comments are closed.