Uniper wins bid in the first auction held by the German Federal Network Agency for CHP plants

Uniper Kraftwerke GmbH won a bid in early December for the first tender offer by the German Federal Network Agency (BNetzA) for combined heat and power plants (CHP plants) under 50 megawatts. The company was successful in bidding for a 30.5-megawatt plant (electrical) at an industrial site in Marl, Germany. The 82 megawatts that were attributed in the auction shall be divided among seven companies. These companies will receive funding from the German Federal Network Agency in the amount of their individual offer. According to the German Federal Network Agency, the average volume-weighted price of the winning bid was 4.05 cents/kWh. Uniper now has the option to build a plant of an appropriate size at the Marl site by the end of 2021, which will produce both electricity and heat.

After an amendment to the legal doctrine in mid-2017, the CHP plants with a power range of between 1 and 50 megawatts shall no longer be subsidized by a fixed amount, but can participate in a tender offer every six months. In the first round on December 1, 2017, 20 bids totaling 225 megawatts were submitted, meaning that it was more than twice oversubscribed.

Eckhardt Rümmler, Chief Operating Officer at Uniper said: “Our winning offer makes a combined heat and power plant in Marl an economically attractive offer. We can feed the heat generated there into the integrated network operated by Uniper Wärme GmbH and can then have the flexibility to respond to the demand in the northern Ruhr area.”