with limited investment

The project is implemented by a consortium of companies: Rafako SA - as the leader, Energoprojekt-Katowice SA, Tauron Wytwarzanie SA and scientific partners - Silesian University of Technology and Cracow University of Technology.

The growing share of renewable energy sources in the energy mix of Poland and other European Union countries is causing the power sector to face a growing problem of reduced profitability of coal-fired units. At present, in order to provide the necessary reserve in case of an unforeseen decrease in renewable energy production, a large part of conventional units must be operated in periods when the market price of electricity is lower than the variable costs of its production. On the other hand, the growing share of RES contributes to the need to periodically shut down units or keep them in hot reserve, which in turn is costly due to the cost of additional startups and higher maintenance costs than before.

The implementation of this project proposes:

• Apply a solution that improves the economics of conventional generating units by increasing the flexibility of their operation and lowering the current technical;
• and reducing the current technical minimum.

The impact of the project will be:

• The possibility of reducing the power production during the price trough and thus reducing the losses associated with the need to produce power below variable costs. It is expected that the proposed solution will allow to reduce the technical minimum of units in special cases to the level of about 25% of the rated capacity.
• The ability to provide the required power reserve for the electricity system with fewer units.
• By increasing flexibility, some of the conventional generating units currently in hot reserve will be able to be shut down while contributing to a greater use of RES.

Taking into account the advantages of implementing the proposed technology, it is expected that its main customers will be coal-fired power plants of the 200 and 360 MW class, which face the problem of suboptimal operation of their units.

The value of the project implemented by the Consortium amounts to PLN 9,599,511.11, including PLN 5,710,961.27 from the National Centre for Research and Development.