New Year’s Eve was certainly no time for partying for the employees of the Hodonín electric plant –they had a lot of work to do. Three hours before midnight unit 4 went into its new mode of operation which exclusively uses biomass as a fuel.
“The electric output of the unit 4 ranges between 25 - 30 MW, depending on biomass supplies. The unit needs to burn up to 1200 tons of biomass per day. Naturally we have spare biofuel supplies for the unit startup and stabilization of output,” says Antonín Svěrák, head of the operations management department of the Hodonín power plant. About 1600 tons of biomass needs to be delivered every working day in order to create a sufficient reserve, which will cover the operation over weekends.. Quality preparation 
of the biomass mixture has been ensured since December using a new mobile screener. The machine with an hourly capacity of 80 - 90 tons prepares the required biomass granules (below 50 mm in diameter). After assessing its experience with the machine the plant in Hodonín is planning to install a stationary biomass screener later this year.
The power plant in Hodonín is the biggest producer of this type of green energy within the CEZ Group. From January to December2009 its production achieved a year-on-year increase of 25 percent, nearly 165 thousand MWh, covering consumption of more than 50 thousand households.
The Hodonín power plant is also unique in Europe in terms of supplying heat across the border, as from its total annual heat production of 800 000 GJ it supplies 120 000 GJ to the town of Holíč in Slovakia.
As part of the efforts to use only pure biomass, combustion tests were conducted in one part of the Hodonín plant last autumn to test biofuel based on fryer oil; experiments were also performed using sunflower meal and grounded corncobs.
Automatic star-shaped mobile biomass SuperScreener was supplied to theHodonín plant by its manufacturer -Neuenhauser Maschinenbau GmbH. The sortingfield consists of a system of several sections with rotating rubber stars through whichthe biomass gradually passes. The fuel of a required size falls through the screenwhile bigger pieces end up in a separate container.
The increased volume of burned biomass also represents a contribution by the CEZ Group to the announced Biomass Action Plan of the Czech Republic for the period from 2009 to 2011. The plan is supposed to help to meet the obligation of the Czech Republic to the European Union - to increase its share of energy from renewable sources in gross electricity consumption.
In the coming 15 years the CEZ Group, the biggest domestic producer of electricity, is planning to invest 30 billion Czech crowns in the development of renewable energy sources. The objectives of the CEZ Group to expand production capacities using renewable sources are directly related to the objective of the Czech Republic to produce, in compliance with the EU climate-–energy package, 13.5 % of energy from renewable sources by 2020.
The objectives are also in agreement with Futuremotion, in which the CEZ Group declared its commitment to invest in new technologies which will in the future allow the production, distribution and consumption of electricity more efficiently and economically.