Austria: Kelag builds a €14 million, 5 MW biomass plant that takes gas out of the Kärntnermilch dairy

On 9 November, construction officially began in Spittal an der Drau, Carinthia, on Kelag Energie & Wärme's new biomass heating plant, built on the premises of the Kärntnermilch cooperative. According to Kelag's press release, the plant has a capacity of 5 MW and the group's heating subsidiary is investing around €14 million.

What is being built. The plant will mainly produce process steam for the dairy, which until now has come from natural gas. Kärntnermilch's management says the new installation will cover the plant's entire steam demand, while gas will, according to Kelag, remain only as a back-up for outages and for very large demand peaks. Because its output can be adjusted flexibly, heat the dairy does not use due to production swings will be fed into the town's district heating network.

The figures. Kelag currently sells 36 million kWh of heat a year in Spittal; from the end of next year, with the dairy's demand, deliveries will reach around 50 million kWh. The new plant will cover 30–40% of the district heating supply, and the share of biomass and waste heat from the Spittal sewage treatment plant will be close to 100%, the company says. The network is about 30 kilometres long; 4 kilometres were laid last year and this year, with around 60 new connections.

Context. District heating in Spittal has operated since 2013, and Kelag says that after the expansion it will be comparable to the older networks in St. Veit an der Glan and Wolfsberg; in Carinthia only the networks in Klagenfurt and Villach are larger. Kelag already supplies the dairy with electricity and gas and has a photovoltaic contracting arrangement with it. Kelag's management linked the project to the very high prices of fossil fuels, imported largely from insecure regions.

What comes next. The increase in heat deliveries to around 50 million kWh is announced for the end of next year. The newspaper Kleine Zeitung notes that the dairy thus becomes independent of gas for its process steam.

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