Germany's Leipheim Gas- Fired Power Project Advances

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Written by Martin Lynch, European News Editor for Industrial Info (Galway, Ireland)--Germany's first proposed gas-fired power plant in four years has moved closer to realisation after developer Stadtwerke Ulm (Baden Wuerttemberg) and engineering firm Siemens AG (FWB:SIE) (Munich, Germany) notified the country's Federal Cartel office of their intention go ahead with the project.

The companies are planning to build a combined cycle gas turbine (CCGT) plant in Leipheim, in the southern state of Bavaria. Located at an old airfield, the plant will have a generating capacity of 600 megawatts (MW) and will be built as a reserve plant to replace nuclear plants due to close in the region in the coming years and as a back-up for the region's growing renewable energy portfolio. Industrial Info puts the value of the contract at approximately 400 million euro ($450 million).

German newspaper Welt am Sonntag reported that construction of the plant, which is awaiting clearance from the European Union's competition authority, is expected to kick-off late next year and commissioning will take place in 2019.

The construction of the plant will end a drought of new conventional power plant building in Germany. The country's government has committed to shutting down all of its nuclear power plants in the coming decade while actively supporting a nationwide push for more renewable energy under its "Energiewende," or "Energy Transition" programme.

In recent years, gas-fired power has been overshadowed by cheaper coal-fired power. Energy prices have suffered greatly in Germany with most of the large utility companies opting to shut down more expensive gas-fired plants in favour of bringing back online older coal-fired plants, which have been cheaper to run. Last year, E.ON SE (FWB:EONGY) (Dusseldorf, Germany) was forced to close two modern gas-fired plants in Irsching, claiming they were too expensive to run in the current climate. For additional information, see April 2, 2015, article--E.ON Shutting 'Unprofitable' German Gas-Fired Plants.

Bavaria currently generates about 30% from renewable energy sources including solar, hydropower, biomass and wind. It wants to boost that figure to 50% by 2021. Nuclear power supplies just under half of the region's electricity via the Gundremmingen power plant and its two 1,344 MW reactors, but those are due to be shut in 2017 and 2021.

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