E.ON Fires Up Isle of Grain Power Plant

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Written by Martin Lynch, European News Editor for Industrial Info (Galway, Ireland)--Energy company E.ON UK has started full commercial operations at its Isle of Grain gas-fired, combined heat and power plant in Kent, in southeast England.

The company, part of Germany energy giant E.ON AG's (OTC:EONGY) (Dusseldorf, Germany), has fired up the third combined-cycle gas turbine (CCGT) unit at the 1,275-megawatt (MW) power plant, which will be classed as one of the world's largest CHP stations when complete. The Isle of Grain project has cost €563 million ($816 million) to complete and is seven months overdue thanks to a series of technical problems. French company Alstom (FRA:ALO) (Paris, France) provided three of its GT26 turbines for the project, alongside STFC30C reheat steam turbines connected on a single shaft to a hydrogen-cooled TOPGAS generator and a HRSG.

The construction and commissioning of the Grain CHP scheme is still under way and will provide waste heat in the form of hot water to National Grid's nearby liquefied natural gas (LNG) terminal. It is expected to be commissioned later this year.

When operational, it will export 340 MW of waste heat from the Grain CHP power station, which would otherwise have been discharged into the nearby River Medway. This will heat a closed demineralised water circuit to send hot water to the LNG terminal about 2 kilometres away. The terminal will use the 42ºC water to vaporise the liquefied gas so that it can be fed into the National Grid's gas network.

This will result in a reduction of up to 350,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide each year by the LNG terminal and, E.ON claimed, it will allow Grain to achieve overall efficiency of up to 72%. E.ON runs 13 CHP projects in the U.K. at present, generating 600 MW of power and around 1,000 MW of heat.

The rollout of CHPs in Europe is expected to rise dramatically in the coming years as the European Commission (EC) has decreed that all new and refurbished thermal electricity generation plants should be fitted with high efficiency heat recovery equipment. In its recently published Energy Efficiency Directive, the EC has said that by 1 January 2014, the Member States will have established "a national heating and cooling plan for developing the potential for the application of high-efficiency cogeneration (CHP) and efficient district heating and cooling."

According to its own figures, CHP saves at least 30% of energy compared to separate electricity and heat production but, despite its proven track record, the growth of CHP in Europe has remained static.

"CHP is a mature, well-proven technology and there is an additional economic potential of at least doubling CHP by 2020," the EC said in a statement. "Despite this, CHP share remained flat. The current share is 11%. Since 2004 there was only 0.5% increase. A 6% per year growth would be needed to realise the economic potential by 2020, which is at least 21%."

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