Port of Helsingborg Magazine Winter/Spring 2006 - Helsingborgs ...

for household purposes alone, 400,000tonnes are needed annually. The restof Europe has now realised the needto wholly or partly convert coal-firedplants to ones using biofuel instead.‘The price of pellets is probably startingto stabilise,’ says Christer Olsson. ‘Weimport 50 per cent of our requirementsfrom the Baltic and North America.We buy the rest in Sweden.’Shipping principal means oftransportL ocally produced pellets arrive bytruck but about 8 5 per cent come bysea. L oad siz es vary between 3 ,000 and1 5,000 tonnes. Considering that thestorage capacity is 3 0,000 tonnes, manyshiploads are needed each month,particularly during the peak season.The P ort of H elsingborg unloads theships and ensures that the products arestored. The P ort is also responsible forseeing to it that the material comesfrom storage into the plant and formaintenance of the outer conveyorbelt. H aving entered the plant, thecentimetre-long pellets are ground intoa fi ne powder that is blown into theboiler. The temperature is high, in thefurnace 1 , 1 00-1 , 2 00° C, with a steamtemperature of 540° C. Appro x imately3 0 per cent of the energy is transformedinto electricity and 6 0 per cent intodistrict heating. The district heatingis released into a network that coversthe centre of H elsingborg it´ s outlyingdisticts of Råå, Ö d åkra, L arö d andH ittarp. The majority of families k eptwarm by this heating when the winterwinds are howling live in apartmentsin the centre of H elsingborg.The transfer to using pellets has notbeen simple. Biofuel contains corrosivesubstances that produce a coating whenfi red, but the requirement was thateffective power as well as boiler efficiencyshould be maintained. F inding asolution has tak en time, so the transferfrom coal has been gradual, even if twothirds of the coal was able to be phasedout as far back as 1998. But a solutiondid e x ist and now Västhamnsverk et isa fully modern biofuel plant.N e w crane, new land markM ore changes are in the pipeline.The most stri k ing is of course “ R e fl ek -tion ” , architect Anders Wilhelmson’swinning entry for the embellishmentof the pellets warehouse in the WestH arbour. An enormous mirror will“ bring the s k y down” to the sloping roofof the warehouse. This eye-catcher willbe in place in the middle of this year.Closer to earth, but still significant, isthe new mobile crane that the P ort ofH elsingborg has ordered. The cranewill be delivered during the spring.The scoop in crane 15“Star Opal” unloads pellets from CanadaFACT BOX, Ö res u n d s k raft• Ö resundsk raft, with its headquarters in H elsingborg, has about 3 7 0 employees.• The company supplies almost 230,000 customers with electricity, district heating, natural gas and district cooling.I t is the six th largest company on the Swedish electricity mark et.• The organisation was founded in 185 9 , when H elsingborg’s G asverk was established. I ts job was to produce anddeliver gas to central H elsingborg.• The group now includes six wholly owned subsidiaries and four half-owned companies. The Nordic countriesma k e up the area of operation.• Turnover in 2 004 was appro x . SEK 2 .5 billion.• Västhamnsverk et is the largest production plant and was tak en into commercialoperation in 1982. About 7 0 people work there.www.oresundsk raft.se