Agreement: heat from Mellach again for the Styrian capital.

A new sustainability partnership for the common supply of district heating to more than 80,000 households in the Greater Graz region has now been contractually fixed between Energie Steiermark and VERBUND. VERBUND will produce district heat for Greater Graz via cogeneration at the Mellach combined cycle gas turbine power plant for the coming winter season from autumn 2021 and supply it to Energie Steiermark; an option to extend the contract is available. 

The decision on the possible continuation of this cooperation will be taken in January of the coming year. The district heating of Energie Steiermark is therefore now getting another highly efficient source of energy. Initial supplies from Mellach arrived in Graz in a “test programme” as early as November 2020. The contract is flexibly adapted to market conditions: the maximum quantity of VERBUND’s supply from Mellach is around 600 gigawatt hours (GWh), equivalent to around half of the heat needed in Greater Graz.

“The partnership is a clear win-win situation, as the resource of gas can be used most efficiently for the generation of electricity and district heating. Despite sufficient generation capacities in our heating plant on Puchstraße, we use this solution to ensure certainty of supply for around 80,000 district heating customers on an even broader basis and also contribute to a better air quality in the Graz urban area,” say the two Executive Board members of Energie Steiermark, Christian Purrer and Martin Graf. “Our offensive to become even greener in the area of heat and the generation of renewable energy will not be slowed by this,” confirm Purrer and Graf. The agenda of the green energy company and working group “District heating 2020/2030” includes several innovation projects.

“As a leading energy company, VERBUND makes a big contribution to the security of supply in Austria,” says Achim Kaspar, director for generation and digitisation at VERBUND. “The Mellach site operates with the state-of-the-art combined cycle gas turbine power plant and district heating power plant converted to run on gas for supporting the grid, and will additionally supply up to 600 gigawatt hours of heat to Energie Steiermark in the 2021-2022 heating period – with the option to extend beyond that. We are therefore the key partner for a clean district heating supply in Greater Graz.”