What is a second-hand power plant still being worth?

What is a second-hand power plant still being worth?

[May 2020] This is the question that every operator actually asks himself when further operation at the current plant location is no longer viable. With our well-established troveo evaluation method, we can answer this question fast and accurately, regardless of whether the asset is only 3 or already 30 years old.

As a key element of our services, we again carry out the troveo evaluation for about 15 existing power plant units in recent months and valuated them for our customers based on market prices. Our method was applied to both, gas-fired power plants, i.e. combined cycle and open cycle gas turbine power plants, as well as to coal-fired or biomass-fired steam turbine plants; the generating capacities of these units ranged from 70 to 450 MWe.

The motivation for these assessments was not only a possible sale after decommissioning; some of these plants are currently in so-called grid reserve, i.e. allocated units are not yet allowed be sold and dismantled. In these cases, the operators needed our combined commercial and technical assessment to determine the capital lock-up costs of their assists. As a special requirement, the transmission network operators and ultimately the regulator must also confirm our valuation results.

In addition to the explicit and detailed evaluation of more than 60 coal-fired and gas-fired power plant units, our evaluation scheme is also based on the sales offers of about 1,000 power plant units worldwide, which we regularly recorded over the last few years as part of our marketing activities. About one third of these offers provide plausible price information.

The troveo evaluation scheme is designed to evaluate both, units as a whole as well as up to 20 different main components individually. This way, the seller can decide whether he offers the entire plant in a worthwhile manner or only a few, still well-functioning, valuable components. As the sale of power plant equipment would reduce the net material value, i.e. the eventual scrap value, we always include these scrap values in our calculations and then indicate to the seller the pure added value through resale. All this important information is then used by our customers to coordinate with their management the sales strategy and further procedure.