Standard content for Members only
To continue reading this article, please login to your Utility Week account, Start 14 day trial or Become a member.
If your organisation already has a corporate membership and you haven’t activated it simply follow the register link below. Check here.
The Eggborough coal-fired power plant will run 500MW more capacity than initially expected, helping to ease the UK’s constrained supply margins ahead of winter.
A spokeswoman for the 2GW generator said that all four of its units will run this winter, but stopped short of confirming whether its fourth unit will be returning to service this November under National Grid’s precautionary tender process for Supplemental Balancing Reserve (SBR).
Until this week Eggborough maintained that one of its four units would need to close after the government snubbed its application for the funding of a biomass conversion unit in December last year.
The change in plans comes around three weeks after National Grid said that it will manage the increased risk of a supply shortfall this winter by tendering for an undisclosed amount of supply-side reserve.
Power market participants told Utility Week that the decision to run the unit could be an economic one with or without a supply-side contract from National Grid, due to favorable market conditions.
Wholesale prices for power to be delivered in Q4 are firm following a string of outages which have tightened the margins between supply and demand, while the cost of coal remains bearish, boosting profitability for coal-powered generators.
The fire-damaged Ferrybridge coal-fired power plant and four of EDF Energy’s nuclear reactors, taken offline due to safety concerns, were removed from service over the summer. EDF Energy initially gave a mid-October restart date for the four nuclear units at the beginning of the month said it plans a “phased return” between the end of October and the end of December 2014.
Earlier this week the grid operator said it has secured contracts with large-energy users to reduce their grid demand by a total of 319MW over peak demand hours this winter as part of its planned demand-side balancing reserve (DSBR).
Energy secretary Ed Davey has spoken out, saying the UK’s winter power supply is secure.
Please login or Register to leave a comment.