December before Belgium’s strategic reserve hits 850MW capacity

It will be December at least before one of the two gas-fired plants included in the Belgium strategic reserve will be available instead of November as planned its operator said, tightening supply margins in a country already entering winter with more than 50% of its nuclear capacity off line.

Fears of power shortages have mounted as the future of the Doel 3 and Tihange 2 reactors remain uncertain and the unplanned outage of the Doel 4 reactor is expected to last until the end of the year.

On 3 September, the Belgian energy ministry unveiled its latest move against power shortages during winter – a selective load-shedding plan as an emergency measure. Belgian authorities will be able to cut off electricity in select areas of the country to prevent the grid collapsing.

Regardless, “Belgium will be structurally dependent on imports throughout the winter,” the system operator Elia warned. The grid can import 3.5GW in the winter, but imports may be limited if a cold spell descends across neighbouring countries.

Elia has calculated that shortages could affect the grid for 49 hours in the period between 1 November to 31 March. This could extend to 116 hours in the case of exceptionally cold temperatures.

And the calculation of shortages is built on the premise the strategic reserve will be fully operational.

Missing capacity

The strategic reserve designed to provide 850MW of additional capacity in the case of “a considerable risk of a structural deficit in the control area in the short term”, may not be fully available as planned. The reserve is to be made up of two decommissioned gas-fired plants with additional capacity from improved demand-side management.

Electricity provider EDF Luminus’s plant in Seraing will provide 485MW of extra capacity. But the plant in Vilvorde operated by German utility E.ON has been shut since January. Its management has warned that the plant will not be ready on time. The reserve, which is slated to be available from 1 November, may be missing the 265MW of capacity to come from Vilvorde at its start.

“We are doing everything we can to have the plant running, but it will require some construction work and the hiring of some new people,” a spokesman for E.ON said. “We are aiming to have the plant ready in December but we cannot give an exact date at present as the process also depends on our suppliers,” he said.

A further 100MW is to come from industrials, which have pledged to reduce consumption. The reserve is to be reviewed annually and is expected to cover potential winter shortages in generation for the next three years.

Balancing tariff

As a further measure, Elia has increased its imbalance tariff to €4,500/MWh, encouraging actors on the wholesale market to balance their portfolios. The mechanism works by remunerating providers offering extra capacity, while imposing charges on those who are unable to meet their customers’ demand for electricity.

The tariff may be applied if the strategic reserve is already activated and it is confirmed a structural shortage exists. The last-resort tariff is implemented to encourage market players to buy all the power they need to supply their customers even if it is expensive. The most expensive trade recorded by ICIS on the Belgian over-the-counter power market is €140/MWh, for a Day-ahead Peak contract transacted in February 2012. Joachim Moxon