Bavaria's power plant park

Author: Dr. Klaus Hassmann, Cluster Energy Technology (As of July 2016) The power plant list published regularly by the Federal Network Agency shows: Bavaria still has a broadly positioned, low CO2 - release power plant park.

Bavaria has in the absence of its own resources of coal very early in the 2nd half of the last century on nuclear power, expanded the domestic hydropower and for energy efficiency reasons also built gas-fired power plants. The phase-out of nuclear power, as well as the priority given to coal on the electricity exchange, has upset Bavaria's well-coordinated power supply, which was built up over decades.

The current power plant list of the Federal Network Agency, as of May 10, 2016, was evaluated; it lists generation plants ≥ 10 MW individually. Wind or solar farms are also listed individually, provided that the sum of the generation plants of a farm is at least 10 MW. Generating facilities < 10 MW are listed as a lump sum per energy source. In this article, the author has taken values from the list that are considered significant for Bavaria, such as the number, total output, average output-related age (in addition, the youngest and the oldest power plant), and plants with heat extraction; some of these values were determined using the data shown. The results are presented in tabular form. The power plants in operation are sorted by fossil-fired, renewables and nuclear. In addition, the article also includes an overview of power plants decommissioned since 2012 and plants that have been denied decommissioning. Extensive  explanatory text is not necessary with the clear, tabular presentation.

The tables are also designed so that in future (e.g., every 2 years) updated articles, the changes can be clearly presented; the interested reader should be able to follow them easily.

Fossil fuel-fired power plants

Table 1: Electricity generation from fossil fuel-fired power plants

*Includes power plants that can be fired by at least two of the following fuels: Natural gas, biogas, hard coal, refinery gas, petroleum products, and residuals; the author has also assigned power plants with waste incineration (7 plants with a total of 141 MW) to this category.

The power plant list does not include efficiencies; for this purpose, a note: gas-fired power plants of recent date with gas turbine, whose waste heat is used in a 2nd process step in a steam turbine to generate electricity (combined cycle), achieve an electrical efficiency of 55 to 60%. Power plants of approximately the same age that convert fuel into electricity in a steam power plant are in the 40 to 45% range; the efficiency of old plants is much worse. Heat extraction  significantly increases the efficiency of the power plant. Table 1 shows that predominantly in the last two to three decades plants with heat extraction of heating, or process heat came on line.

Renewable power generation technologies

Table 2: The range of renewable energy sources

In Table 2, each energy source is ranked by installed capacity. Hydropower on an industrial scale has been one of the key technologies for power generation and supply in "water-rich" Bavaria for more than a century. In the course of the energy turnaround, electricity generation from solar radiation energy - Bavaria is one of the German states with the most hours of sunshine - has grown strongly and clearly exceeds the output from hydropower with just over 11 GW compared to 2.6 GW; however, if the amount of electricity generated per year is compared, hydropower is still ahead. Despite many complaints about the slowing effect of the distance regulation,  wind power has established itself in the midfield of renewables.

Nuclear power

Table 3: Nuclear power generation

As politically decided, the Grafenrheinfeld nuclear power plant was recently decommissioned; thus, the available nuclear power capacity has been reduced by 1275 MW to 2707 MW.

Applied for decommissioning of power plants approved and legally prohibited

Table 4: Decommissioning applied for from 2012 but legally prevented

In public, the decommissioning applications for the two combined cycle power plants with 846 and 545 MW nominal capacity in Irsching, which went into operation in 2010 and 2011, respectively, made high waves. As far as is known, there is still no final consensus between the Federal Network Agency on the amount of payments for the operator capacity (reserve operation of the power plants).

Table 5: Power plants that were finally decommissioned from 2012

The table above shows that three natural gas-fired plants in Bavaria were decommissioned after about 40 years of operation; these are two plants that were commissioned in 1975; no start of operation is given for the third lower-performance power plant.

Conclusion

Table 6: Summary of power plants in operation

Finally, Tab  the power balance of the operating power plant fleet broken down by energy source; as mentioned earlier, solar leads with 45%, ahead of nuclear with 16%; the latter will drop to zero by 2023. The 3841 MW of fossil generation also includes backup power plants.

It can be concluded that grid expansion is a top priority. Delays beyond the year of decommissioning of all nuclear power plants are admitted even by the Federal Network Agency; this means that there is also time pressure to build additional reserve power plants in Bavaria. The first plants are to be put out to tender soon.