Electric boiler: This is how the wind power ought to come to the district heating community | EUROtoday

For greater than six years, the “Karoline” electrical boiler of the Hamburg Energy Works was nearly at all times quiet. Since March 5, the ability within the Karolinenviertel has now been feeding district heating into the community, which is generated utilizing wind energy. “Karoline” is the primary “Power-to-Heat” system of this sort in Germany, which went into operation with the brand new idea “Benefits instead of regulating”. At the beginning, she produced warmth for 5000 households for an hour. With its full efficiency of 45 megawatts, “Karoline” might provide 15,000 households with district heating.

The foundation for that is Paragraf 13K of the amended Energy Industry Act final yr. The operator of the utmost voltage community, on this case 50hertz, agreed with the operator of the facility -powered boiler, a agency worth for either side. The community operator thus reduces its effort within the community management, if plenty of regeneratively generated electrical energy is to be anticipated, in northern Germany specifically wind energy. The system operator, in flip, can feed extra local weather -friendly warmth into its system.

Since the tip of 2018, the Hamburg power works have saved the “Karoline” in reserve for the heating season. “It is an important part of our plant infrastructure in order to maintain district heating in an emergency,” says Lando Helmrich von Elgott, who’s accountable for the financial short-term management of technology crops on the Hamburg power works. “Due to the network charges, the operation of the boiler in the Karoline has so far been uneconomical, the facility has only run into test operation once in the past few years.”

That has now modified. The so-called “13K current price”, which the Hamburg power works must pay, was capped for 2025 by the transmission community operators to 45 euros per megawatt hour. “We buy the electricity on the market and 50Hertz covers the difference costs from the 13K price at the stock market price,” says Helmrich von Elgott. “The network fees for the operation of the boiler in the karoline are compensated for in addition to the electricity price.” It is contractually stipulated that the Hamburg power works 50Hertz “adequately provide the boiler. The Karoline is now an overall economic component for our district heating system, with which we can replace heat quantities from other systems. ”

The “Karoline” is not the only electric boiler on the district heating network of the Hamburg energy works. At the location of the hard coal heating system in Wedel, 50Hertz has installed a power-to-heat system with 80 megawatts. In the logic of the network operation, however, this system is only switched on later. “This system right here within the ‘Karoline’ is requested very early to keep away from an anticipated overload of the community,” says Helmrich von Elgott, “the system in Wedel makes use of 50Hertz if there are already acute bottlenecks on the web.” The Hamburg energy works also build a power-to-heat system in the new “Energy Park Hafen” on the Dradenau.

Plants such as the ten -meter -high boiler of the “Karoline”, which holds 14,000 liters of water, are not energy storage, but they fulfill a similar function in the system of renewable energies. Because the wind blows irregularly and the sun does not shine at night, the yield of regeneratively generated electricity fluctuates. So far, the network operators had to stop many systems if, for example, the wind blew particularly hard. This is expensive and uneconomical. With the help of battery and hydrogen stores, but also with industrial heat pumps and with power-powered heating boilers, much more regeneratively generated electricity can be fed into the energy system.

The heat generated in the boiler of the “Karoline” is handed over to the district heating network via a heat exchanger. “We need about 15 minutes lead time for the boiler, after which we can quickly ride the system up to a maximum of 130 degrees of water temperature. The water temperature in the boiler is kept constant at 60 degrees in standby, ”says Tobias Hadler, operational assistant in the operation of decentralized production at the Hamburg energy works. “With the beginning of normal operation, we will now additional optimize the boiler, for instance when shortening the lead time.” In the future, the electric heating boiler should be an integral part of the generation of district heating in Hamburg: “In April the ability shall be preserved, the water from the boiler is drained,” says Hadler. “In September, the Karoline shall be ready for the subsequent heating season.”

Olaf Preuss is the enterprise reporter of the world and world on Sunday for Hamburg and Northern Germany. He has been reporting on the German and worldwide power trade for greater than three many years.