Wartsila Builds on German CHP Success

Finnish technology group Wartsila has won a contract to deliver a 90-MW gas-fired, combined heat and power plant (CHP) on an engineering, procurement and construction basis to Dresden's local utility Drewag, it said January 14. Start-up is planned for 2021 and follows a similar CHP deal with another utility.

The 31SG engines' efficiency and capacity to delivery district heating and electricity at the same time and within a few minutes of start-up, to compensate for intermittent renewables, were the factors that led to the award, Wartsila said. The plants are not the combined-cycle variety, which are more efficient at generating just electricity than are CHP plants on the same basis. But the need to offset the failure of renewables in real-time means that CCGTs are not practical.

Wartsila will also maintain the plant under its proprietary performance guarantee for ten years, with a five year extension option. Performance targets are determined based on measured data.

Drewag said the plant would be "equipped with the highest level of efficiency and emission control systems to supply safe, clean, and affordable energy for the state capital for the coming decades."

Wartsila last year delivered 10 of its 10-MW 20V34SG engines to generate heat and power for another German utility, Kraftwerke Mainz-Wiesbaden. Those engines can reach nominal capacity in two minures and will allow KMW to sell reliable district heat and power to the city of Mainz and make revenues from short-term trading.