Endesa’s coal-fired plants turbine upgrade resulted in estimated saving of EUR 20 million in the first six years of operation

• The improvement plan was executed between 2007 and 2011 and entailed investment of Euro 54.8 million in the upgrade of the steam turbines at the As Pontes (La Coruña), Compostilla (León), Andorra (Teruel) and Litoral (Almería) plants.
• On top of these savings, this work extended the useful life of these steam turbines, which is a key achievement. In the case of As Pontes, the upgrade, along with the revisions and conversions of the boilers, will extend their useful by up to 25 years.

Madrid, 20-10-2014 — /EuropaWire/ — The upgrade plan for the steam turbines at Endesa’s mainland coal-fired plants carried out between 2007 and 2011 has improved specific consumption for energy production, resulting in an estimated saving of Euro 120 million in the first six years of operation. Specifically, the improvement of the plants’ energy efficiency has resulted in a reduction in carbon consumption for the same energy production of up to 300,000 tonnes per year, or 136,000 equivalent tonnes of oil.

From an environmental standpoint, the lower carbon production entails an annual reduction of 563,000 tonnes of CO2 emissions for the same electricity production.

The project involved work at the As Pontes (La Coruña), Compostilla (León), Andorra (Teruel) and Litoral (Almería) facilities. The upgrade, which entailed investment of Euro 54.8 million, involved the replacement of all mobile (rotor) and fixed parts of the high- and medium-pressure turbines with new state-of-the-art and highly-efficient materials. In addition to delivering savings and emission reductions, this innovative project has also lengthened the useful life of the facilities.

The upgrade work coincided with the major reviews of the generators and the conversions of the boilers. In the specific case of As Pontes, this resulted in an extension of around 25 years in the turbines’ useful life.

The chief objective of the project was to improve the specific consumption of each plant by 3% through, among other things, a more efficient design and the use of new materials. One key characteristic is that the efficiency improvement is sustainable and incremental in relation to the original turbine design, with a lower pace of degradation over time.

The testing carried out at the plants after the upgrades with the aim of assessing real specific consumption yielded better than expected results, with improvements of around 4% in some cases.

The upgrade of the steam turbines has also yielded other important benefits such as higher exit capacity, increased availability and lower maintenance costs thanks to the use of newly-designed components that degrade less between checks.

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As Pontes facilities (La Coruña).