Wte Power Plant Operation on the Energy Market Under the Influence of Legislation Changes

In this paper, the feasibility of combined heat and power waste-to-energy plant is investigated in theconditions of implementation of the new legal framework for waste disposal and management aswell as new power market conditions. As waste management is a core issue of sustainabledevelopment of regions, especially urban and metropolitan areas, as well as a need for sustainableenergy supply, these two energy flows logically come together in the facility for heat and powerproduction by waste incineration.

However, when new legislation guidelines are implemented,quantity and quality of municipal solid waste as fuel changes, which has a great influence on theoperation of waste-to-energy based systems. While there is a lot of fuel in the first years of operation,the feasibility of facilities may come in jeopardy with further development of waste managementsystem.

This paper investigates gradual compensation of decreasing municipal solid wasteproduction by introducing new fuels such as woody biomass from the industry, agriculture andenergy crops. Scenarios are developed to offer an assessment of the rate of waste replacement withbiomass from the surrounding area, taking into account various types of fuel mix with inherent lowerheating value changes and sustainability of fuel transport to the plant gate.

Due to legislative changesfacility needs to achieve profitability within the energy market and conditions of market trade ofenergy. Results of the economic analysis show that decreasing waste quantities compensation withwoody biomass can increase the feasibility of such projects. In the case of meeting legislation goalsby source separation, such compensation increases the profitability of already profitable projectwhich enables reduction of gate fees by 32% for same economic results.

Further interventions in thewaste management system, which include the introduction of the mechanical-biological treatmentfacility, further reduce the profitability of these kinds of projects and make the viability of thisproject dependent on fuel compensation.