Belgium Calls for CCGT Restart

Belgian energy minister Marie-Christine Marghem has called for a gas-fired plant at Vilvoorde, just outside the capital Brussels, to be demothballed in order to cope with a 750 MW shortfall in expected power supplies this winter, arising from an unexpected extended outage of two Engie-owned nuclear reactors.

Engie announced September 22 that the two reactors, each of 1 GW, would shut for seven months longer than expected so that faulty concrete in non-nuclear buildings could be repaired.

According to press reports September 26, citing broadcaster RTL, 250 MW will be found by bringing the Vilvoorde combined-cycle plant (CCGT) back onstream; an extra 100 MW would come from Engie gas-fired plants; 200 MW would be from demand reduction by large industry; and 200 MW would come from emergency generators. One report said Engie had guaranteed to provide 400 MW of the 750 MW.

The 385-MW Vilvoorde CCGT was sold by Uniper to Bulgarian private company Energy Market in 2017, but an out-of-action steam turbine had reduced its working capacity to 265 MW.

Marghem said after meeting Engie that it must make further efforts and that she would monitor the impact on power prices.

In other news, the European Commission September 27 approved Belgian plans financially to support three offshore windfarm projects to be in line with EU state aid rules. Belgium thus may support of a maximum of €3.5bn the three North Sea windfarms: Mermaid (235 MW), Seastar (252 MW) and Northwester2 (219 MW).