MGT Teesside Limited announced on the 11th of August the construction of the biggest biomass combined heat and power plant in the world.
The plant will be built in Middlesborough in northeast England and the preparation for the site will begin in a few weeks. The Teesside biomass CHP plant at Teesport has invested £650 million in the project. The main construction works is due to start a few months later and the commercial operations are planned to start in 2020.
Back in July, MGT Power announced a partnership with Macquarie Capital and Macquarie Commodities and Financial Markets to deliver the project. Macquarie and Danish pension fund PKA, will now become the joint owners of MGT Teesside, which will own and manage the Tees Renewable Energy Plant (Tees REP).
The project will be built under a turn-key “engineering, procurement and construction” contract by a consortium of Tecnicas Reunidas of Spain and Samsung Construction and Trading (SCT) of South Korea.
“The Tees REP project has had to overcome many hurdles in development but we have now successfully reached the next stage despite the difficult financing environment,” said Ben Elsworth, CEO of MGT Teesside.
At least 600 jobs will be created during construction and about 100 full time jobs sustained on site once operational plus several hundred more in the supply chain – many in the local region. Biomass discharge services will be provided by PD Ports through the port of Teesport.
Tees REP will be fuelled by wood pellets and chips from the United States and Europe that will be delivered directly via ships arriving at Tees Dock adjacent to the plant. It will generate enough electricity to supply approximately 600,000 households as well as heat for supply on site and for nearby users. Biomass fuel will be delivered directly to the CHP plant from ships arriving at the adjacent Tees Dock.
The CHP plant will be compromised of one “circulating fluidised bed” boiler, which will produce steam which will be driven by a single steam turbine generating electricity that will be exported directly to the high voltage national grid system.
