What types of power plants make up the Hungarian energy system and what kind of developments are needed to guarantee the safety of the service?
At the moment there are 18 big power plants and 272 (under 50 megawatts) small power plants in Hungary. Their built-in total capacity is 8914 megawatts, but the power plant park is superannuated. In the last 17 years the built-in capacity grew by 1,700 megawatts because 3,000 megawatts of new capacity has been built but 1,300 megawatts had to be shut down. There is not one notable base load power plant and this causes the biggest problems in domestic power distribution. Although the built-in total capacity with the import covers the demand for power consumption, every year the required power increases by 117 megawatts and slowly the peak summer consumption will reach the record of winter consumption, which is mainly caused by the rapid spread of air-conditioning systems. The other problem is that the domestic power plant park is superannuated, for nearly twenty years there hasn’t been built a base load power plant. Big power plants have an average age of 23 years, the small power plant
