Jänschwalde Power Station is located near the village of

Jänschwalde Jänschwalde (Sorbian language, Sorbian: Janšojce) is a Municipalities of Germany, municipality in the district of Spree-Neiße in Brandenburg, Germany. It is situated in the region of Lower Lusatia. The nearest town is Peitz; Cottbus is 25 ...

Brandenburg Brandenburg, officially the State of Brandenburg, is a States of Germany, state in northeastern Germany. Brandenburg borders Poland and the states of Berlin, Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, Lower Saxony, Saxony-Anhalt, and Saxony. It is the List of Ger ...

on the

German German(s) may refer to: * Germany, the country of the Germans and German things **Germania (Roman era) * Germans, citizens of Germany, people of German ancestry, or native speakers of the German language ** For citizenship in Germany, see also Ge ...

Polish Polish may refer to: * Anything from or related to Poland, a country in Europe * Polish language * Polish people, people from Poland or of Polish descent * Polish chicken * Polish brothers (Mark Polish and Michael Polish, born 1970), American twin ...

border. The

lignite Lignite (derived from Latin ''lignum'' meaning 'wood'), often referred to as brown coal, is a soft, brown, combustible sedimentary rock formed from naturally compressed peat. It has a carbon content around 25–35% and is considered the lowest ...

-fired

power station A power station, also referred to as a power plant and sometimes generating station or generating plant, is an industrial facility for the electricity generation, generation of electric power. Power stations are generally connected to an electr ...

has an installed capacity of 3,000

megawatt The watt (symbol: W) is the unit of Power (physics), power or radiant flux in the International System of Units (SI), equal to 1 joule per second or 1 kg⋅m2⋅s−3. It is used to quantification (science), quantify the rate of Work ...

s and consists of six 500 MW units. It is the third-largest brown

coal power plant A coal-fired power station or coal power plant is a thermal power station which burns coal to generate electricity. Worldwide there are about 2,500 coal-fired power stations, on average capable of generating a gigawatt each. They generate ...

in operation in Germany and is currently owned by EPH, who took over its ownership from

Vattenfall Vattenfall is a Swedish multinational corporation, multinational electrical power industry, power company owned by the List of government enterprises of Sweden, Swedish state. Beyond Sweden, the company generates power in Denmark, Finland, Germa ...

in 2016.

Overview

The power station was built by VEB BMK Kohle und Energie ( de) between 1976 and 1988. Between the

German reunification German reunification () was the process of re-establishing Germany as a single sovereign state, which began on 9 November 1989 and culminated on 3 October 1990 with the dissolution of the East Germany, German Democratic Republic and the int ...

and the mid-1990s, modern environmental technology was adopted, making higher energy efficiency possible. Despite this, the power station has the fifth-lowest ratio of energy efficiency to CO₂

emission Emission may refer to: Chemical products * Emission of air pollutants, notably: ** Flue gas, gas exiting to the atmosphere via a flue ** Exhaust gas, flue gas generated by fuel combustion ** Emission of greenhouse gases, which absorb and emit rad ...

in Europe due to the low quality lignite fuel, according to a study by the WWF. Jänschwalde power station predominantly fires raw brown coal from nearby

open-pit mining Open-pit mining, also known as open-cast or open-cut mining and in larger contexts mega-mining, is a surface mining technique that extracts rock (geology), rock or minerals from the earth. Open-pit mines are used when deposits of commercially ...

in Jänschwalde and

Cottbus Cottbus () or (;) is a university city and the second-largest city in the German state of Brandenburg after the state capital, Potsdam. With around 100,000 inhabitants, Cottbus is the most populous city in Lusatia. Cottbus lies in the Sorbian ...

to the north. At full load, the power station burns approximately 80,000 tons of brown coal a day. From one kilogram of brown coal about one kilowatt-hour of

electrical energy Electrical energy is the energy transferred as electric charges move between points with different electric potential, that is, as they move across a voltage, potential difference. As electric potential is lost or gained, work is done changing the ...

is produced. The yearly power output lies around 22 billion kWh (22 TWh) when active. The power station was reactivated during the 2022 energy crisis, and turned off in July 2023. In October 2023, one 500 MW unit was restarted, and another was made ready to start. The site formerly featured three obsolete chimneys. These were gradually dismantled in a complex process between 2002 and 2007, as conventional demolition was not possible on the site for space reasons. A unique procedure was introduced for this task: the chimneys were broken down from the top to a height of by a special mechanism equipped with excavators which works round the edges of the chimneys, after which the remaining stacks were demolished by conventional means.

Notes

{{DEFAULTSORT:Janschwalde Power Station Energy infrastructure completed in 1976 Towers completed in 1976 Energy infrastructure completed in 1989 Coal-fired power stations in Germany Vattenfall Towers in Germany Buildings and structures in Spree-Neiße Chimneys in Germany Economy of Brandenburg Energetický a průmyslový holding

Overview

See also

Notes