Agora Energiewende | Flexibility in thermal power plants

of 25–40 percent of nominal load. State-of-the-art
lignite power plants can achieve minimum loads of
35–50 percent of nominal load. By contrast, power
plants built ten to twenty years ago in industrial-
ised countries had minimum load levels of 40 per-
cent (hard coal) to 60 percent (lignite). Retrofitting
can reduce minimum loads even further; in Germany,
for example, minimum load levels of 12 percent have
been achieved. Older coal power plants designed
mainly for baseload operation, especially in countries
like China or India, can have much higher minimum
load levels, significantly limiting the bandwidth of
their operation. The ramp rate of state-of-the-art
coal power plants (hard coal and lignite) can reach
6 percent of nominal load per minute, equalling or
exceeding the ramp rate of the most-common CCGTs.
The ramp rate of the most-common hard coal power
plants in industrial countries is significantly lower,

Power generation from nuclear, hard coal and lignite power plants and demand in Germany,
23 to 30 March 2016 Figure S1

100
90
80
70
60
[GW]

50
40
30
20
10
0
26. Mar

28. Mar

30. Mar
29. Mar
24. Mar
23. Mar

25. Mar

27. Mar

demand Hard Coal Lignite Nuclear

Agora Energiewende (2017)

Qualitative representation of key flexibility parameters of a power plant Figure S2

100 PNom
Ramp rate
PNet [% PNom ]

PNet

30 PMin

Minimum load
0
Start-up time t [h]

Fichtner (2017)

12
 STUDY | Flexibility in thermal power plants

as can be seen in figure 3 (right). The same is true of
old coal power plants in countries like South Africa,
where the ramp rates per minute usually do not
exceed 1 percent per minute. Start-up times,
both hot and cold, are also significantly reduced in
state-of-the-art designs.
Even though the flexibility features of state-of-the
art coal power plants are significantly better than
those of older power plants, it must be pointed out
that coal-fired power plants are in general less flex-
ible than gas-fired generation units, especially in
regard to start-up times and ramp rates.

Minimum load and ramp rates of different hard coal power plants Figure S3

Minimum load of different hard coal power plants Ramp rates of hard coal power plants in South Africa
(as a percentage of nominal capacity) compared to most-commonly used and state-of-the-art designs
70 7

60 6
[% of Nominal Capacity

50 5
per minute]

40 4
[%]

30 3

20 2

10 1

0 0
old hard coal-fired most-commonly example of hard coal most-commonly state-of-the-art
power plants used and state- Retrofit power plants used hard coal hard coal
in China of-the-art hard in Germany in South Africa power plants power plants
and India coal power plants (Bexbach Unit)

DEA, NREL, Fichtner (left), Prognos, Fichtner (right)

Ramp rates and start-up times of different power plant technologies Figure S4

OCGT CCGT CCGT hard coal-fired

(state-of- (state-of- (commonly power plant
the-art) the-art) used) (state-of-the-art)
1
PNet [% PNom ]

start
0
0 1 2
t [h]

Fichtner (2017) based on (VDE, 2012)

13