Technical and Economic Analysis of Low-Emissions Modernization of Existing Heating Plants in Poland

Anna Hnydiuk-Stefan, Aleksandra Otawa, Krzysztof Stefan and Dariusz Zmarzły
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Anna Hnydiuk-Stefan: Faculty of Production Engineering and Logistics, Opole University of Technology, 45-758 Opole, Poland
Aleksandra Otawa: Faculty of Production Engineering and Logistics, Opole University of Technology, 45-758 Opole, Poland
Krzysztof Stefan: Faculty of Electrical Engineering Automatic Control and Informatics, Opole University of Technology, 45-758 Opole, Poland
Dariusz Zmarzły: Faculty of Electrical Engineering Automatic Control and Informatics, Opole University of Technology, 45-758 Opole, Poland

Energies, 2021, vol. 14, issue 21, 1-26

Abstract: An analysis is performed with regards to technologically outdated heating plants operating in many areas where fossil fuels such as coal and gas are utilized, in order to consider the alternatives of their modernization. By application of a chart using a variety of alternatives, the economic feasibility of executing two types of modernization of heating plants are explored: a single-fuel gas–steam CHP plant and a coal-fired heating plant to a coal-fired CHP plant with a condensing turbine. This study demonstrates how the selection of modernization technology is affected, in terms of profitability, by the value and variability in time of the price relationships between energy carriers, rapidly growing charges related to CO 2 emission allowances, and costs depending on other pollutant emissions that originate from the operation of electricity and heat sources powered by fossil fuels. In both technical cases of modernization, lower prices of energy carriers coupled with CO 2 emissions allowances lead to higher prices of electricity that can be sold as additional products following this modernization, and consequently, the specific cost of heat production in the repowered heat sources is lowered. The calculations were performed by the application of models of heating plant modernization applying continuous time notations, which offer the determination of the most suitable time of initiation of this modernization. Such relationships would be difficult to describe in the case of the use of traditional discrete models. In the case of a simultaneous increase in the prices of all main factors affecting the cost of heat generation, such as the price of gas, electricity and CO 2 emissions, the fastest modernization of the heating plant to single-fuel gas–steam CHP provides the possibility of the best economic performance.

Keywords: CO 2 emissions; CHP; low emissions; modernization technology (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Q Q0 Q4 Q40 Q41 Q42 Q43 Q47 Q48 Q49 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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