UPDATE 1-UK capacity auction secures 40.8 GW of back-up power led by gas plants

(Updates with details on new Drax gas units)

By Nora Buli

March 11 (Reuters) - Gas-fired power plants secured 26.4
gigawatts (GW) of a total 40.8 GW of back-up power contracts
awarded in a UK capacity market auction, provisional data
released by National Grid showed.

The capacity market is a British government scheme to pay
energy providers to maintain spare capacity to ensure adequate
supply for future years.

The latest auction on Wednesday for 2024/25 cleared at 18
pounds ($25.08) per kilowatt per year.

Electricity transmission cables connecting Britain with
neighbouring markets secured a total capacity of nearly 6.9 GW
across nine interconnectors, followed by 2.1 GW of pumped
hydropower capacity.

Nuclear power was awarded just over 2 GW of agreements.

Operator EDF Energy said it had secured one-year
agreements for the period Oct. 2024 to Sept. 2025 for four of
its nuclear reactors, in addition to three units at its West
Burton gas-fired power plant and two new-build battery storage
units.

Drax secured agreements to provide nearly 617 GW of
existing capacity, predominantly from pumped storage and hydro
assets which are worth 10 million pounds in 2024-25.

In addition, Drax had also provisionally secured agreements
for three new 299 megawatt open cycle gas turbine projects at
sites in England and Wales for the delivery period October 2024
to September 2039 that were worth around 230 million pounds, it
said.

Germany's RWE said it had secured 6.5 GW of
capacity agreements, most of it gas-fired units.

Another German utility, Uniper, secured 4.2 GW of
agreements across gas- and diesel-fired units, the National Grid
data showed.

Energy supplier SSE secured capacity contracts for
just over 2.8 GW of electricity generation capacity for
gas-fired, hydroelectric and pumped storage capacity as well as
an onshore wind farm.

($1 = 0.7176 pounds)
(Reporting by Nora Buli in Oslo; Editing by John Stonestreet
and Jan Harvey)