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Electricity & heat production

World leading bioenergy plants
and new technologies

Our Bioenergy business is part of our Danish utility business. We supply electricity and heat to our customers. More and more of our production comes from green and reliable sources. This is significant for our power plants and their production methods.

By converting from coal and gas to biomass, our combined heat and power (CHP) plants need to be incredibly flexible. They need to be able to switch from high to low demand quickly and efficiently.

Our technological resources support the ongoing optimization of the converted plants once in operation. In general, the overall efficiency and flexibility of our CHP plants are fully preserved after a bio-conversion has taken place.

We continue to create value in our biomass conversion programme by focusing on two areas:

Fuel flexibility


Our plants have increasingly become multifuel CHP plants (most plants can technically still run on fossil fuels even after being bio-converted), giving us flexibility in the fuel mix and ensuring a high degree of security of supply for our district heating customers.

Technical flexibility


We aim to maintain and strengthen our position as the leader in Danish heat and power generation with best-in-class operational efficiency. We will do this by continuing cost-effective operations and focusing on safety.

Flexible biomass sourcing

 
Being able to cope with power ramps – i.e. sudden and massive requests of active power (MW) – has become increasingly relevant. We use the flexibility of our plants to adjust to the market conditions. We reduce plant load to a minimum when demand is low and maximise heat and power generation when demand is high.

We source biomass mainly in the form of wood pellets and wood chips, supplemented by smaller volumes of straw and other agricultural waste products. To ensure flexible sourcing, we source wood chips and pellets from many countries, with the majority coming from the Baltic countries, Portugal and Russia. We are committed to the Danish Industry Agreement for Sustainable Biomass and we request that our suppliers provide biomass that is certified according to the SBP guidelines.

We supplied
26% of Danish
district heating requirements in
2014

District heating

 
The district heating supply from our biomass plants meets a significant share of our customers’ heat demand.

Since 2000, the share of biomass fuel consumption in the Danish district heating market has increased. Heat generated from our facilities supplied 26% of Danish district heating requirements in 2014.

Combined heat and power

 
We have eight large scale combined heat and power plants (‘‘CHP plants’’), one heat plant and one peak load power plant. In addition, we also hold a 50% share in the combined cycle gas turbine (‘‘CCGT’’) plant in the Netherlands.
 
We use steam not only to produce power but also to provide heated water to the district. Generating heat and power together means less fuel consumption for the same output of energy. This fuel saving represents the CHP advantage.
 
We have achieved an efficiency that makes our power stations not only cost-effective, but also results in a high exploitation of the fuel’s energy content. 

We have 8 large scale combined heat and power plants

Graphic of our plants

Our bioenergy plants

Our seven central bioenergy power plants, produce electricity & district heating

Read more about our bioenergy plants