Primary Energy Management at STEAG

The Primary Energy Management System of STEAG helps meet the demands of the liberalized electricity market. Coal procurement relies on the evaluation programme SPICE®, an expert system which makes allowance for all technical limits of boiler plants in the allocation of fuel blends and analyzes the cost of conversion, thus permitting optimization of the essential cost factor in the production of electricity from hard coal. Coal handling is facilitated by a coal-database-aided programme available at all sites. Incoming coal inspection and plausibility check, organization of transport to buffer stores and on to the day bunkers, laboratory analysis and documentation of the data of all received quantities, blends and bunkered quantities complete the general technical overview. Contracts, prices, costs, etc. permit complying with all commercial processing requirements without manual intervention. An experience database published in the STEAG in-house intranet is available for planning and management. Thus, for the operator of coal-fired power plants and the planner of new plants, an aid has been created enabling speedy drawing on information and experience for current work.