German power capacity to May 15 seen up 6.7 pct

FRANKFURT, May 8 (Reuters) - German power plant capacity reported by 26 utility companies in the seven days to May 15 is likely to rise 6.7 percent to 52,737 megawatts, data from power exchange EEX showed on Friday.

The bourse's website, which lists operators' plans on an aggregated basis, showed that nuclear capacity will be broadly steady in the period under review.

This reflects the expected return of E.ON's Grafenrheinfeld reactor from Saturday after a three-week maintenance outage, while at the same time its Grohnde reactor is scheduled to go offline for a two-week standstill until May 24.

Brown-coal-fired capacity of some 450 MW will also be added, if operators' plans go ahead.

Other plans entail the addition of 1,900 MW of hard-coal fired and 1,500 MW of gas-fired capacity.

The EEX data covers 80,147 MW of installed capacity, well over half the German total.

Contributing companies that trade on the exchange are Germany's four top generators E.ON (EONGn.DE), RWE (RWEG.DE), Vattenfall Europe [VATN.UL] and EnBW (EBKG.DE).

Others are Germany's EVO of Offenbach, Stadtwerke Leipzig (SWL), GKM of Mainz, VSE AG, the city of Bremen utility (swb), Cologne's RheinEnergie, Dresden utility Drewag, N-ERGIE of Nuremberg, Stadtwerke 031032 Duesseldorf, Trianel, Halle Trotha and Stadtwerke Duisburg.

Foreign players are Austrian companies KELAG, TIWAG, EVN (EVNV.VI), Salzburg AG, Wien Energie Wienstrom, Energie AG Oberoesterreich (EAG), Verbund subsidiaries ATP and AHB (VERB.VI), and GDF Suez Energie Deutschland (LYOE.PA), formerly Electrabel Deutschland.

The data cannot anticipate unscheduled outages, for which generators allow a reserve.

Looking at operators' planning four weeks ahead, capacity should rise by 9.8 percent to 64,582 MW on June 5 compared with capacity now, the website showed.

(Reporting by Vera Eckert, Editing by Peter Blackburn)