International Power plans 4-month plant outage

LONDON (Reuters) - International Power (IPR.L) plans to close its 1,050 megawatt Rugeley power plant for up to four months from the end of March for an upgrade, Chief Executive Philip Cox said on Thursday.

During the 15-16 week outage, the company will fit Flue Gas Desulphurisation (FGD) equipment to reduce sulphur emissions from the coal fired power plant. It expects the final commissioning in the third quarter of 2008, it said.

As a result, the plant in Staffordshire is expected to produce about 55 percent of its maximum generation capacity in 2008, down from 65 percent in 2007, the company said when it announced a 17 percent year-on-year profit increase for 2007 on Thursday.

Rugeley is burning ultra low sulphur coal to comply with the emissions requirements of the European Union's Large Combustion Plant Directive (LCPD).

(Reporting by Daniel Fineren, editing by Anthony Barker)