New combined heat and power plant for Steyr district heating

The biomass thermal power station in Ramingdorf has been supplying Steyr with environmentally friendly district heating and green electricity for ten years. Since then, the district heating network has grown significantly and now supplies around 8,000 residential units and a number of municipal buildings in Steyr in addition to large industrial customers such as BMW engines. To enable further expansion, Bioenergie Steyr GmbH, a subsidiary of Energie AG and EVN Wärme, is now building an additional heating plant on the site of the thermal power station.

“The demand for district heating has risen sharply, not least because of the worsening climate crisis and the war in Ukraine,” says Stefan Stallinger, CTO of Energie AG: “This expansion will enable us to cover the required generation capacities at one location in the future and at the same time the existing ones Optimal use of infrastructure.”

The core of the plant is a new biomass boiler with an output of 10 megawatts. This enables capacity to be increased by around 30 percent. “In the future, around 300,000 bulk cubic meters of wood chips will be used to provide heat every year,” says EVN CEO Stefan Szyszkowits. That corresponds to a CO2 saving of around 50,000 tons