Powerful electric boilers to go online as part of BelNPP's integration into power grid

MINSK, 23 July (BelTA) – Electric boilers with the total output capacity of 916MW will be commissioned by the end of 2020 for the sake of integration of the Belarusian nuclear power plant into the national power grid, BelTA learned from Vladimir Bobrov, First Deputy Director General, Chief Engineer of the Belarusian national energy company Belenergo.

The official said: “We've taken a number of measures to integrate the Belarusian nuclear power plant into the power grid. They are primarily designed to enhance reliability and smooth out the load curve. With this in mind we are commissioning electric boilers with the output capacity of 916MW. It will be done this year.”

Vladimir Bobrov explained that equipment with the total capacity of 760MW will be commissioned at several power plants, including the Bereza state district power plant and the Lukoml state district power plant, cogeneration plants, and compact cogeneration plants. Electric boilers with the capacity of 156MW will be commissioned as part of heating plants. Most of them will be commissioned in August-November. Equipment with the capacity of about 20MW will be commissioned in December. The availability of electric boilers will make the power grid more reliable taking into account how electricity consumption changes over the course of the day.

“Electric boilers with the capacity of 916MW will be commissioned in heating plants and power plants of the Energy Ministry. We've set out to accomplish this task and it will be done. As a matter of principle, our plans go beyond that. We are talking about commissioning 1,116MW,” Vladimir Bobrov added.

In his words, the coronavirus pandemic has affected the commissioning of new equipment to some degree because the arrival of foreign specialists in charge of supervised commissioning was delayed. Yet many startup operations were completed by Belarusian specialists thanks to online consultations of foreign engineers.

The Belarusian nuclear power plant is being built near Ostrovets, Grodno Oblast using a Russian design featuring two VVER-1200 reactors with the total output capacity of 2,400MW. Rosatom's engineering division is the general contractor. The first unit is supposed to go online in 2020, with the second one scheduled for launch in 2021.