On August 10, Bavarian minister president Dr Markus Söder gave the official go-ahead for the commissioning of the new Irsching 6 gas-fired power plant near Ingolstadt. The 300 MW plant was built by Uniper, and will be operated by Uniper in the future. It will serve exclusively as a security buffer for the power supply – the plant will not be available to the market, but will only be connected when system security is at risk.
The project was put out to tender by the transmission system operator TenneT, which will request the plant as needed in the future. Uniper was awarded the contract for construction and operation at the end of 2018. The final commissioning of this power plant, known officially as ‘special grid-related equipment,’ will take place as soon as final occupational safety checks and corresponding documentation have been completed. Trial operation was successfully completed on 1 August.
The Irsching power plant is located near the town of Vohburg on the Danube in the Irsching district. It consists of a total of six independent units, of which the two oldest – Irsching 1 and 2 – have already been shut down. Unit 3 has been classified as system-relevant by the Federal Network Agency and is available to the network operator as a reserve to ensure network stability. The very efficient CCGT plants Irsching 4 ("Ulrich Hartmann") and the joint-venture power plant Irsching 5 (Uniper share: 50.2 percent) are in market operation and are sometimes started up and shut down several times a day. With an efficiency of around 60 %, both units are among the most efficient combined cycle plants in Europe. The plants are also regularly used by TenneT in the so-called redispatch procedure. Together, the Irsching power plant units are the largest power plant site in Bavaria with over 2100 MW of installed capacity.
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