Altbach Power Station is a coal-fired

power plant 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 ...

owned and operated by

EnBW EnBW Energie Baden-Württemberg AG, or simply EnBW, is a publicly-traded energy industry, energy company headquartered in Karlsruhe, Germany. History Foundation and development EnBW came into existence on 1 January 1997 as a result of the merge ...

at Altbach,

Baden-Württemberg Baden-Württemberg ( ; ), commonly shortened to BW or BaWü, is a states of Germany, German state () in Southwest Germany, east of the Rhine, which forms the southern part of Germany's western border with France. With more than 11.07 million i ...

Germany Germany, officially the Federal Republic of Germany, is a country in Central Europe. It lies between the Baltic Sea and the North Sea to the north and the Alps to the south. Its sixteen States of Germany, constituent states have a total popu ...

. It has an output capacity of 1,036 MWe, 783MW being coal fired divided amongst two 420-30MW units and 253MW of gas fired capacity divided amongst four units ranging from 53-85MW. The power station is also connected to the Mittlerer Neckar district heating system. The first power plant on the Altbach site was built in 1899. The precursors of the current power plant went into service in 1950 (unit 1) and in 1956 and 1958 (units 2 and 3). Unit 1 was shut down in 1982 and demolished in 1985. Units 2 and 3 were shut down and demolished in 1993. Unit 1 was replaced by a new unit in 1985 and units 2 and 3 by a new unit in 1997. Both units have 250 metre tall chimneys. Unit 1 from 1985 received architectural landmark status in November 2021. Like the visitor center and the new Unit 2, it is the work of the German Architect Gerhard Feuser of the group Angerer & Feuser. The power station also features a forced draft

cooling tower A cooling tower is a device that rejects waste heat to the atmosphere through the cooling of a coolant stream, usually a water stream, to a lower temperature. Cooling towers may either use the evaporation of water to remove heat and cool the ...

which is used to cool the remaining water not used in the heating system.

References

Coal-fired power stations in Germany Buildings and structures in Esslingen (district) {{Germany-powerstation-stub