HKW-Nord, Coal & RDF fired 411 MWe thermal power plant in Munich Germany

Dear colleagues,

On a Sunday morning, I preferred tour within Munich city. I took ride on S-bahn to Airport. On the  route I noticed a coal fired thermal power plant generating 411 Mwe electricty to the 110 kV major city transmission, and also generating low pressure heating steam for nearby district heating. 

Hard Coal  and municipality refuse (Refuse Drived Fuel) are brought by train wagons direct to the plant. There is no storage at the site other than tanks for supplementary fuel-oil. Bottom ash - slug is transported by the same means to dumping area outside of city limits. 

There is no apparent air pollution, no feeling for any dust, nor SOx or NOx emission. It was so surprising, as well as  very educating experience. 

The plant is in North of Munich as in combined heat and power plant powered the SWM .

It's right on the outskirts of Munich in the community Unterföhring .

It consists of three blocks, which are operated in a combined heat and power. They generate electricity and district heating . Block 2 is with coal fired (about 800,000 tonnes of hard coal per year), in blocks 1 and 3, municipality residual waste is incinerated (in year 2006: 700,000 tonnes). This waste comes from the waste company in Munich , the Munich District and other public and private suppliers. If additional heat demand is up then seven gas-fired boiler are operated (heating, built in 1974, 2 x 50 t / h and 1 × 100 t / h steam, auxiliary heating, built in 1989, 4 x 25 t / h of steam for heating). The cogeneration plant produces maximum heating capacity of 900 megawatts , which is a total of 411 megawatts of electrical power. 

The electrical power, is split on the individual blocks as follows:

• Block 1: 21 MW
• Block 2: 363 MW (at full load in condensing mode)
• Block 3: 27 MW

The cooling water from the nearby Mid-Isar river channel.

The power supply of Unit 2 is connected in the 380-kV high-voltage level in the mains distribution providers SWM infrastructure . 

The production of district heating supplies the entire range of the Munich Northwest. There are of HKW Nord from supplying the hot water networks North and Freimann, as also issued a more than 7 km long pipeline steam in the downtown steam network (compression from 3 to 5 in a steam flow rate of up to 720 tph).

All the best from Muenchen, Deutschland.

Haluk Direskeneli