Backup electric boiler in Tusimice power plant

Replacement of a gas boiler by an electric one, which serves as a back-up during regular summer maintenance works on the steam boilers at the plant. The electric boiler thus helps to keep heating supplies running for the customers throughout the whole year (in the past, customers had to endure 2 summer weeks without warm water each year).

The Tusimice coal power plant is one of the key coal plants operated by CEZ Group that underwent complex renovation in the past few years in order to fulfil EU regulations. Besides electricity production, the plant also provides district heating to nearby cities. During the modernization works, a gas boiler was installed to keep the heating supply going. This gas boiler was used as a back-up for the steam boilers and as the main source during regular summer outages for maintenance. In 2017 the gas boiler was replaced by an electric boiler for the same purposes.

“Yearly maintenance outages are necessary to carry out various repairs. While the legislature allows us to stop hot water delivery for up to 14 days during these outages, it is obvious that customers are not happy with such a long time of discomfort. For this reason we have been considering various options of how to ensure hot water deliveries from a back-up source. After a thorough analysis we opted for an electric boiler,”

Otakar Tucek, director of the Tusimice power plant

The new electric boiler has an installed capacity of 7 MW, weighs 2,5 tons when empty and 12,5 tons when full. The maximum temperature of water in the primary circuit is 135 °C. The installation of the new electric boiler took three days. During summer 2017 it already supplied hot water to customers during the maintenance outage