CEZ Delays Opening of New Ledvice Coal Plant

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Researched by Industrial Info Resources Europe (Galway, Ireland)--Czech electricity company CEZ AS (PRG:BAACEZ) (Prague) has announced that the opening of its new 660-megawatt (MW) lignite-fired plant at Ledvice will be delayed by one year. CEZ had originally planned to open the plant at the end of 2012, but this has now been postponed to the end of 2013 because of technical issues.

A fault has been discovered with the steel welding on the plant's 1,685-tonne-per-hour ultra supercritical boiler that was supplied by Alstom Power Systems (EPA:ALO) (Levallois-Perret, France). It is estimated that this setback will push the construction completion timeline to the second quarter of 2013, with plant commissioning occuring in the fourth quarter of the same year.

The project, which is being led by Doosan's Skoda Power Company Limited (Plenz, Czech Republic), also includes a Skoda Power MTD 70 Steam Turbine and a Siemens generator, which have been installed without incident. As well as delivering high-efficiency electrical power, the new unit at Ledvice will use the latest technology for flue gas desulphurization (FGD) from AE&E (Vienna, Austria) and ash-handling to meet new European environmental standards.

The Ledvice Power Plant began operation in the second half of the 1960s. Originally consisting of five units, only three are currently in operation. Units 2 and 3 will be shut down when the new unit is operational. Unit 4, which was converted to a fluidized bed boiler construction 10 years ago, will remain operational.

CEZ is one of Europe's top 10 power utilities with a strong market position in the Czech Republic. As part of a coal-fired power plant modernization program, CEZ is shutting down old and obsolete coal units and investing in more viable plants such as Ledvice, Tusimice and Prunerov power plants.

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