LONDON (Reuters) - A contract win for E.ON's (DE:EONGn) Killingholme gas plant in Britain to provide back-up power for next winter will not be enough to reverse the company's decision to end normal operations at the plant, it said on Wednesday.
The company announced this year the 900 megawatt (MW) gas plant in North Lincolnshire in the North east of England would close due to poor market conditions.
"No review of the "full" closure decision will be undertaken as market conditions still prohibit the medium to long-term future of the plant in "normal" generation mode," the company said in a statement.
E.ON said a small number of staff will be kept on at the site to manage safety and operational aspects to allow the plant to be available if it is called on to provide emergency electricity.
On Friday, National Grid (L:NG) announced it had secured an extra 3.58 gigawatts (GW) of electricity to cover potential demand during winter 2016-17.
Killingholme was awarded a contract to provide 600 MW of that capacity.
Eggborough Power, which has announced its 2,000 MW coal plant would likely close in March next year, was also awarded a contract under the National Grid's so-called Supplemental Balancing Reserve (SBR) scheme.
A spokesperson for Eggborough said it was in discussions with National Grid about the contract.
"Entering into an SBR contract for 2016-17 would mean that production would not cease, in totality, at the end of March 2016," the company said in an email to Reuters.
A series of closures at coal-fired plants due to environmental regulations and the mothballing of some unprofitable gas plants has reduced Britain's generating capacity over the last few years, forcing National Grid to take measures to ensure the country's lights stay on even in a cold winter.