STEAG Fernwärme GmbH

At STEAG GmbH’s long-established power plant site in Herne/Germany, construction is currently in progress on a state-of-the-art combined cycle gas turbine (CCGT) power plant, which is to replace the hard coal fired unit previously operated there in the course of the coming year (Figure 1). The new Herne CCGT plant, which STEAG GmbH, Essen/Germany, is to operate together with its partner Siemens, ranks among the most flexible, efficient and consequently resource conserving power plants of its kind worldwide. STEAG has registered the coal fired unit, which went online in 1989, for final decommissioning. The aim is to convert the unit to one with a boiler fired by natural gas. It is to be used in future to back up the district heating supply at the heart of the Ruhr area.

When the new Herne CCGT plant goes into continuous commercial operation in 2022, the old coal fired combined heat and power unit at the same site will be history. “With the CCGT plant, which also generates electricity and heat at the same time in accordance with the principle of cogeneration, we are ensuring a secure supply and supporting the energy system in a much more environmentally friendly way,” says Ralf Schiele, who, as a member of the management board of STEAG, is responsible for Markets and Technology. And furthermore, “STEAG is building the energy future in Herne and in doing so making an important contribution to decarbonization and the success of the energy transition in the region, because the switch to natural gas will roughly halve CO₂ emissions.”

STEAG is also concurrently planning the second step in sustainable CO₂ savings at the Herne site. “We will also convert the plants that are to be used to back up the heat supply in the future to lower emission fuel,” says Schiele. To this end, STEAG is planning to convert the existing Herne 4 coal fired unit to a natural gas-fired boiler.

Performance of the necessary work within the current schedule for the construction and commissioning of the Herne CCGT plant is dependent on a permit from the transmission system operator Amprion for the final decommissioning of the former hard coal unit. “Since such a decision is preceded by extensive reviews of, among other things, the system relevance of the plant to be decommissioned, STEAG has today submitted a corresponding application to Amprion in order to be prospectively ready to take action next spring,” Schiele explains.

As soon as the transmission system operator has given its approval for final decommissioning, STEAG will be able to start implementing the plans after the 2021 heating period, i. e. in spring 2022. “With the Herne CCGT plant and the conversion of Herne 4 to natural gas, the heating supply to around 275,000 households in the heart of the Ruhr region, which is already climate-friendly today, will once again be noticeably lower in emissions,” says Michael Straus, managing director of STEAG Fernwärme GmbH.

In terms of resource efficiency and climate protection, it will also be possible to reduce CO₂ emissions at the Herne site even further in the future by switching partially to green hydrogen firing.

STEAG’s plans to convert the old coal fired unit in Herne are also good news for the Ruhr region as a business location. This is because the number of jobs that will be retained at the site in the long term even after the switch from hard coal to natural gas will be even greater. “Herne is and will remain a highly skilled energy hub where the energy transition for Germany is shaped. This is good news in terms of environmental protection in our city and in the region as a whole,” says Herne’s Mayor Frank Dudda.

At the same time, the projects in Herne are an expression and symbol of the consistently pursued process of transformation at STEAG as a whole: “For several years now, we have been successfully and with increasing speed aligning the company to the growth markets of the energy future,” says Joachim Rumstadt, Chairman of STEAG’s Board of Management, placing the environmentally friendly conversion works at the Herne site in a broader context. “No matter whether in the field of the hydrogen economy, power generation and supply from renewables, storage technology, heat supply, the planning and implementation of customized decarbonization and efficiency solutions for industrial customers, or in the construction and operation of distributed generation plants or large-scale power plants as in Herne, STEAG always brings to the table expertise in energy that has grown over more than eight decades,” says Rumstadt. This makes STEAG an active and successful contributor to the energy transition, especially in Germany.

“Because,” as Joachim Rumstadt sums up, “the projects in Herne in particular fulfill the requirements for a forward-looking energy supply almost ideally: they guarantee security of supply, are cost-effective, resource-efficient and therefore environmentally compatible.” (STEAG/Si.)

With effect from 1st January 2021, industrial engineer Matthias Ohl (Figure 1) has taken up the post of Technical Director at STEAG Fernwärme GmbH, an Essen-based subsidiary of the energy company STEAG GmbH.

“STEAG Fernwärme is remarkably customer-focused. That provides an ideal breeding ground for new business models,” Ohl remarks in explaining what motivated him to take on a new career challenge at STEAG. Prior to his move to Essen, Ohl spent five years as Head of Power & District Heating Generation at WSW Energie und Wasser AG in Wuppertal.

At STEAG Fernwärme, he succeeds Markus Manderfeld, who cites personal reasons for his decision not to extend his contract, which still runs until the end of March 2021. (STEAG/Si.)

STEAG Fernwärme GmbH, Essen/Germany, looks back on the beginnings of its entrepreneurial activity. What started with the commissioning of the heating plant at Schederhofstrasse in Essen on 20th October 1960, has today developed into a real success story in and for the Ruhr area. Today, STEAG Fernwärme, a subsidiary of the Essen-based energy company STEAG GmbH, is the largest company in the sector in North Rhine-Westphalia.

The first customer of today’s STEAG Fernwärme in October 1960 was the former Thyssen high-rise building, now known as the “Ruhr Tower”. The building, once the tallest structure in the city of Essen at a height of around 80 m, had a connected load of 5 MW. Today, STEAG Fernwärme supplies around 1.6 M MWh of heat to its customers, equivalent to the needs of more than 275,000 households.

“That means that the amount of energy we supply to our customers today is around 250 times greater than when the company was founded,” says Michael Straus, Managing Director of STEAG Fernwärme, once again highlighting the growth during six decades of district heating business in the Ruhr area.

Around six years after its foundation, STEAG Fernwärme began supplying district heating to the city center of Bottrop. That, typically for the coal and steel orientation of the Ruhr area, used part of the heat produced by the power plant at the former Prosper 3 coal mine. “The system developed by STEAG at that time to supply the residents of Bottrop with heating energy is symbolic of STEAG’s efforts to use energy as efficiently as possible at all times. This aspiration has remained part of our corporate DNA to this day,” says Straus.

The expansion of the heating supply to include the city of Gelsenkirchen in 1971 was also closely linked to the industrial policy decisions of the time (Figure 1). “When a joint venture with Ruhrkohle AG was created in 1968 to deal with the challenges of the Ruhr mining crisis which was then at its most severe, the Consolidation coal mine in Gelsenkirchen was transferred from Mannesmann AG to Ruhrkohle,” Straus reports. In the following period, Mannesmann sold its mine-based heating plants. “As happened only a few years earlier in Bottrop, STEAG took over the heating plants and started to establish a district heating supply for Gelsenkirchen.”

Seen in this light, STEAG played an active part in structural change in the Ruhr area from an early stage and was a pioneer of an energy supply system in the region that conserves resources and protects the climate. This approach by the company also became apparent in the next milestone project, which went into operation in the summer of 1978 after a three-year planning and construction period. The Ruhr District Heating Trunk Network, at that time the first interregional district heating network in Germany, and also the first time that STEAG’s district heating was generated according to the particularly efficient and resource-saving principle of combined heat and power generation.

“This project casts a particularly clear light on the two core competencies of STEAG, which have been decisive for the company to this day. A high degree of technical know-how and the associated problem-solving skills and the equally necessary energy industry expertise to ensure that convincing planning also leads to commercial success,” says Joachim Rumstadt, Chairman of the Board of Management of STEAG GmbH.

Around 30 years ago – as is the case again today – construction of a power plant in Herne was the center of interest. Then, in the form of the Herne IV power plant unit, a powerful heat extraction system was put into operation at the site for the first time in order to supply the district heating customers in Essen, Bottrop and Gelsenkirchen from Herne. “Today, we are writing a new chapter in STEAG’s corporate history at the Herne site with the construction of a new combined cycle power plant,” says Rumstadt.

The new, highly efficient gas-fired power plant will go into operation by the end of 2022 and replace the coal-fired power plant. STEAG Fernwärme’s carbon footprint, which is already good today, will be noticeably improved once again by the changeover from hard coal to natural gas.

Looking back, the past six decades have been an impressive success story for STEAG Fernwärme, as the company’s energy performance data quoted at the beginning of this article impressively demonstrates. But the company’s commercial success has never enticed the active players to rest on their laurels – on the contrary. “We are constantly developing, planning new projects, pressing ahead with technical innovations and, in tune with our corporate identity, we always keep in mind that the supply of heat is more than just a business: STEAG is an integral part of what is called “public services”, not only but especially in the Ruhr area,” says Straus, outlining how his company sees itself.

In this respect, it was only logical for STEAG, in a partnership with the municipal utility Stadtwerke Essen, to push ahead once again with the expansion of the district heating system in Essen. “The “Eastern Line”, the first of three construction phases of which has now been successfully completed apart from some minor remaining work, is the necessary condition for supply of district heating to 19 further districts of Essen. The first contracts with major customers and end-users have already been concluded. From the end of 2020, the new ALDI North Campus in Essen-Kray will be supplied with district heating. At about the same time, the district heating supply for the new TÜV-Nord office building in Essen-Frillendorf will start. For the city of Essen, this expansion of the district heating supply is a big step forward in terms of sustainability and climate protection,” says Straus, underlining the importance of the project.

In 2021, the Eastern Line project will have been completed. STEAG Fernwärme will then set about developing further new project ideas, pressing ahead with technical innovations and thus not only continuing its own success story, but also remaining a successful player and shaper of structural change in the Ruhr metropolitan region. (STEAG/Si.)

As usual, the AGM of STEAG Fernwärme GmbH, Essen/Germany, appointed the members of company‘s Advisory Council. There were three new appointments here: Alongside Arnd Fittkau, Director of real estate company Vonovia SE, the District Heating Advisory Council now also includes Martin Harter as alderman of the City of Essen for the areas of Urban Planning & Construction and Peter Schäfer, Chairman of the Executive Board at Stadtwerke Essen AG. There was also another change in chairmanship. At the start of August, Andreas Reichel succeeded STEAG Employee Relations Director, Alfred Geißler, who took retirement.

The Advisory Council at STEAG Fernwärme is traditionally a committee with a top level membership. Indeed, all of the members display a high degree of professional expertise and experience in the field of urban planning, as well as the energy and housing sectors. Alongside the aforementioned new members, Jürgen Rupp, member of the Execu-tive Board at RAG-Stiftung, Ralf Brauksiepe, CEO at Vivawest GmbH, Burkhard Drescher, management spokesman of InnovationCity Management GmbH, Klaus Haertel, Chairman of the Urban Development and Planning Committee on the Gelsenkirchen City Council, Dirk Miklikowski, CEO at Essener Allbau GmbH, as well as Bottrop‘s mayor Klaus Strehl were all reelected.