Drax has announced plans to convert a fourth unit to biomass
following the UK government consultation response to control the
cost of support for biomass under the Renewable Obligation (RO)
scheme.
The consutation response from the UK govenment proposes capping
the level of Renewable Obligation Certificates (Rocs) power
stations can receive for biomass conversion and co-firing, but
would allow generators to use different units up to the cap.
Drax has converted three of its six units to biomass and will
now convert a fourth, with the government's rules allowing it to
decide which units to operate and when while earning Rocs. This
would protect existing converted units and limit the amount of
incremental ROCs attributable to additional unit conversions to
125,000 per annum
Drax plans to convert the unit to biomass as part of a planned
outage in the second half of the year, before returning to service
in late 2018.
Drax chief executive Will Gardiner said "We welcome the
government's support for further sustainable biomass generation at
Drax, which will allow us to accelerate the removal of coal from
the electricity system, replacing it with flexible low-carbon
renewable electricity".
It is likely the unit will operate with lower availability than
the three existing converted units, but the intention is for it to
run at periods of higher demand
Read more here
