Drax, the UK’s largest power station is situated in North Yorkshire, dwarfing the neighbouring village it is named after. It is situated on the River Ouse between Selby and Goole and has a generating capacity of 3,960 megawatts (MW). Drax was the third power station in the area to be commissioned by the Central Electricity Generating Board (CEGB) following the discovery of the Selby Coalfield, the first being an expansion of Ferrybridge (2,000MW Ferrybridge ‘C’) and the second was a new 2,000MW station at Eggborough. The power station was built in two phases – the first phase comprised three units and began operation in 1973. The second phase of construction was completed in 1986, making Drax the last major coal-fired power station to be built in the UK.

Drax was initially conceived as the largest power station in the UK, at 3,000MW. The capacity was expanded further when the CEGB saw this as a good opportunity to install their first 660MW turbogenerator sets and the plans were revised to almost 4 gigawatts.

The turbine hall is around a quarter of a mile long (400m) and the chimney is the tallest industrial chimney in the UK at 259 metres high. The twelve natural draught cooling towers are 114 metres high and arranged in two groups of six to the north and south of the station.

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Decarbonisation – Conversion to Biomass

Construction and Infrastructure

A conversion to biomass on such a large scale is a huge undertaking, and is in fact the largest decarbonisation project in Europe. One of the biggest challenges is the logistics behind sourcing the fuel. The biomass is acquired from sustainable forests in North America, where waste products are collected up and processed to create pellets suitable for feeding into the power station. The pellets are then transported by road and rail to Louisiana where they are transferred to 50,000 tonne barges to be brought to the UK. The final leg of the journey takes place by rail after which the wood pellets arrive at Drax and are housed in huge biomass storage domes. Unlike coal, which can be stored outside and open to the elements, biomass needs to be kept dry. The four purpose built domes can each hold 75,000 tonnes of biomass in a controlled atmosphere.

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Carbon Savings

The overall aim of converting to full-firing of biomass is to reduce the carbon emissions. Drax is the UK’s sole largest emitter of carbon, and although carbon is still released from burning wood chips, it is carbon that has recently been absorbed while the wood was growing in the forest. As the forest is replanted, further carbon is absorbed from the atmosphere to, in theory, create a carbon-neutral process. However, the sustainability of this process has been questioned. The biggest issue, opponents claim, is that the carbon released into the atmosphere will not be fully reabsorbed by new-growth trees. Transportation of the biomass across the Atlantic only further adds to the carbon emissions, along with the deforestation caused by many biomass projects. Drax claim their carbon emissions have been cut by 80%, but independent estimates indicate those emissions may have even increased as a result of the biomass conversion.

Future Plans

The move away from coal isn’t stopping at the conversion of four units to biomass. Drax aims to become free of coal by 2025 and has laid out plans to convert its remaining two coal-fired units to run on gas. The project will see the construction of two combined cycle gas turbine generators, the waste heat from which will be used to generate steam for two of the existing steam turbines. The gas turbines and two converted steam turbines will generate more electricity than the current total station output, while also lowering emissions.

Drax Image Gallery

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Eggborough Power Station was a 2 gigawatt coal-fired generating plant in North Yorkshire, England. The station comprised four 500 megawatt units, with generating sets supplied by AEI. Construction began in 1962 and the first unit started generating electricity in 1967. Construction was completed by September 1970.

The station was commissioned and initially operated by the Central Electricity Generating Board (CEGB) and became the property of National Power upon privatisation in 1990. British Energy bought the power station in 2000. British energy was purchased by EDF in 2009, however Eggborough’s lenders had the option to purchase the station the following April. On 1 April 2010, EDF transferred Eggborough to the plant’s bondholders. In January 2015 the sale of the power station to Czech Republic-based Energetický a průmyslový holding was finalised.

The low-pressure (LP) turbines of Units 1, 3 and 4 were replaced between 1993-1995 and the high-pressure (HP) turbines of Units 3 and 4 were replaced between 2005-2007. These upgrades increased the plants thermal efficiency and output.

The power station had one chimney which was 198.5m tall, was 21.6m wide at the base and tapered to 18.6m at the top. The chimney contained four 6.1m diameter flue ducts. There were 8 natural draught cooling towers, each 114m tall and 86.5m wide at the base.

In 1998 electrostatic precipitators were fitted to all units, and Flue Gas De-sulphurisation (FGD) was added to units 3 and 4 in 2005. Between 2005-2007 a boiler burner and combustion air system BOFA (Boosted Over Fire Air) commenced on Units 1, 3 and 4 to reduce Nitrogen Oxide emissions.

Eggborough and Ferrybridge power stations pumped ash from their boilers to a disposal site to the south of both stations, called Gale Common Ash Disposal Site. The site is owned by Eggborough Power, and was landscaped by Brenda Colvin into 160m hills with contours.

Eggborough faced the threat of closure for a few years, and in 2018 it was announced it would close by September that year. The power station stopped generating on 23 March 2018.

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Eggborough Image Gallery

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Generating electricity since 1972, Fawley was an oil fired power station on the western shore of Southampton Water in Hampshire.

Commissioned by the CEGB, Fawley was built by Mitchell Construction, comprising 4 sets of 500MW Parsons generating units, totalling 2GW capacity. Two units were mothballed in 1995, leaving 1GW capacity remaining.

The power station has a few unique and interesting architectural features designed by architect Colin Morse. The boiler house is clad in marine grade glass arranged in a zig-zag pattern, which still looks modern and shiny to this day. By the late 1960s, not only the huge main buildings of power stations were designed to make a statement, attention to the ancillary buildings was also being drawn. No other power station reflects this more than the “flying saucer” design of the control building, a large round structure juxtaposed against the straight lines of the expansive turbine hall and towering boiler house behind. Flanking the control building with another huge contrast of design elements, the canteen building is formed from triangular concrete sections.

To minimise the visual impact the power station would have on the surroundings, Fawley was built in a 24 foot deep trench. Unusually, the turbine floor is at ground level, and the lower level of the turbine hall is within a basement. The result is the building, with the exception of the 650ft chimney, is hardly visible from the surrounding areas. The only place to view the building in its entirety is from the Solent or immediate shoreline.

Fawley was never used to full capacity. Being built just before the oil crisis of the 1970s meant it was expensive to run, despite being listed as the most efficient power station in the UK at the time. The power station opted out of the Large Combustion Plant Directive (LCPD), meaning it would not comply with new emissions regulations and therefore could operate for no more than 10,000 hours until the end of 2015. Owners RWE announced closure in 2012 and the station generated electricity for the last time on 31 March 2013.

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Fawley Image Gallery

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Image references:

1. Unknown
2. Gene (GFDL CC Licence)
3. MHG Heating

Ferrybridge C Power Station in West Yorkshire was commissioned by the Central Electricity Generating Board and was built between 1962 to 1968. The ‘C’ Station was the third power station to be built at Ferrybridge. The ‘A’ Station building remains and is now used by RWE as their national heavy engineering facility. The ‘B’ Station was demolished after its closure in 1992.

Ferrybridge C had a capacity of 2 GW from four x 500 MW generating sets supplied by CA Parsons. The CEGB chose Ferrybridge to trail the new 500 MW units, the world’s first single-line turbogenerator sets of this size.

In addition to the main generating units, Ferrybridge C Power Station was built with four gas turbines with a combined capacity of 68 MW. Two of the four gas turbines were retired in the late 1990s, reducing their capacity to 34 MW.

Coal was supplied initially via barges on the Aire and Calder Navigation Canal, utilising a barge tippler capable of unloading 210 ton barges in nine minutes. The tippler was retired in the late 1990s and an automated system was built to receive deliveries via rail.

Cooling water was drawn from the River Aire and after circulating through the power station, was cooled using the station’s 8 cooling towers. The towers were 115m high. The plant had two 198m chimneys. Ash was transported as a slurry via underground pipeline to the Gale Common Ash Disposal Site.

Flu Gas Desulphurisation was fitted to units 3 and 4 in 2009. This allowed those units to meet the requirements of the Large Combustion Plant Directive (LCPD), while units 1 and 2 were closed on 28^th March 2014. In 2013 SSE announced the station would opt out of the EU Industrial Emissions Directive. Ferrybridge C generated its last electricity on 23^rd March 2016. The reasons stated were “irreparable damage” caused by a major fire in 2014, and that the station was now a loss-making operation, predicted to lose £100 million over the following five years.

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2014 Fire at Ferrybridge C

On 31^st July 2014 a serious fire broke out in the Flue Gas Desulphurisation (FGD) Plant for unit 4. Unit 3 was also affected by the fire. Neither unit was operational at the time due to maintenance. Unit 3 returned to service on 29^th October 2014, and unit 4 on 15^th December 2014. The fire had completely destroyed the FGD of unit 4, meaning that unit had to burn very low sulphur coal in order to comply with emissions regulations. The supply of very low sulphur coal ran out in March 2015, at which point unit 4 was retired. The one remaining unit was closed a year later, the reason stated by SSE was “irreparable damage” caused by the fire resulting in a loss-making operation.

Cooling Tower Collapse

The cooling towers at Ferrybridge C power station were arranged in two parallel staggered rows, 350ft apart. Each cooling tower was 350ft high, with diameters at the base of 350ft, at the throat 165ft and at the top 180ft. All were constructed of reinforced concrete shells 5 inches thick. Construction of the cooling towers was completed in 1964.

On the morning of Monday 1^st November 1965 a gale was blowing at Ferrybridge, with a wind speed of 44 m/s at the top edge of the cooling towers (a wind speed that occurs around once every 5 years at Ferrybridge). Vortices formed between cooling towers of the first row, loading the towers of the second row. The vortex frequency was approximately the same as the natural frequency of the towers (0.6 Hz).

The vortex loading caused three of the four towers in the second row to collapse. An eyewitness said that some towers where moving like belly dancers. The second tower from the southern edge of the leeward row (tower 1B) collapsed first, at about 10.30am. The one immediately north-west of it (tower 1A) collapsed about 10 minutes later and the one north-west of that tower (tower 2A) at 11.20am. All three were in the leeward row and were fully completed.

The collapsed towers were replaced and the remaining towers were strengthened with an extra thickness of reinforced concrete.

Fiddler’s Ferry power station was a coal-fired power station located on the River Mersey at Warrington in Cheshire. Construction began in 1964 by the Central Electricity Generating Board (CEGB). In a bid to combine efforts at the design and construction stages the boiler and turbo-generator plant were replicated from West Burton power station located in Nottinghamshire.

Upon privatisation of the UK’s energy industry in 1990 operation and ownership of the power station was transferred to Powergen. In 1999 Fiddler’s Ferry, along with Ferrybridge power station in North Yorkshire, were sold to Edison Mission Energy. They were both subsequently sold to AEP Energy Services in 2001 and again to SSE in 2004 for £136million.

The four 500 MW single shaft turbo-generator units manufactured by English Electric are arranged lengthwise along the turbine hall and provided electricity for around two million people

One of the 500 MW units was retired in March 2019. In June 2019, SSE confirmed that Fiddler’s Ferry would cease generation on 31 March 2020. The plant was desynchronized from the National Grid, ending nearly 50 years of electricity generation. Demolition of the station began in 2020 and was forecast to take up to seven years.

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Documents and Schematics

The Ironbridge Power Stations, sometimes referred to as the Buildwas Power Stations were a series of two power stations which have occupied a site on the banks of the River Severn at Buildwas in Shropshire, England.

The first power station, later to become known as Ironbridge ‘A’ officially opened on 13th October 1932. Extra boilers were commissioned and by 1939 the station had a capacity of 200MW. In 1980 100MW of capacity was taken offline, and the remainder in 1981 when the station was closed.

Construction of the Ironbridge ‘B’ station began in 1963 to meet the rising demand for electricity after World War II. The 1,000MW power station was built alongside the existing ‘A’ station and began generating electricity on 11th June 1969 after delays in construction owing to industrial action and implementation of improvements that had been pioneered during the construction of similar stations using the new 500 MW generating units.

Project architect Alan Clark worked closely with landscape architect Kenneth Booth, to ensure that the station merged as seamlessly as possible into its natural surroundings. When viewed from Ironbridge, the surroundings of the station are hidden by wooded hills. The cooling towers were constructed using concrete to which a red pigment had been added, to blend with the colour of the local soil. So impressive were the measures taken to ensure that the power station was an asset to the gorge and not an eyesore, that it was short listed for a Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors/The Times conservation award in 1973.

In 2012 Ironbridge underwent modification to allow both generating units to run on 100% biomass. This reduced the generating capacity from 500MW per unit to approximately 370MW per unit.

In February 2014 a serious fire damaged unit 1’s turbine and generator. It was later announced that the damage would not be repaired, reducing the plant’s generation capacity to just 370MW in total.

Ironbridge ‘B’ stopped generating electricity on 20 November 2015 when the power station was closed.

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Ironbridge Power Station Image Gallery

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Fires at Ironbridge

Two major incidents have occurred at Ironbridge involving fire. The first took place in 1998 and resulted in the entire turbine hall requiring reconstruction. The second incident in 2014 when unit 1 caught fire. The fire caused extensive damage to the turbine and generator set of unit 1, which was never returned to service.

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Site Plan

Electricity has been generated at Littlebrook since 1939 when the first Littlebrook Power Station was commissioned by the Kent Electric Power Company. Littlebrook ‘D’, which commenced generating electricity in 1981, is the fourth power station to be built on the site and was oil fired. Fuel was delivered by seagoing tankers, offloaded at the river jetty and stored in tanks. Fuel from those tanks, as well as supplying Littlebrook ‘D’, was also transferred by river and road to other power stations in the South East.

Littlebrook ‘D’ Power Station was built by the Central Electricity Generating Board from 1977 onwards with the first unit commissioned in 1981. The station was designed as a fuel oil fired station from the beginning – the diversification of fuel supplies being adopted by the CEGB in the 1970s.

The ‘D’ station incorporated the latest 660 MW, 4-cylinder re-heat turbines running at 3000rev/min with each turbine output therefore being larger than the combined output of the previous A, B and C stations! The turbine output was increased to 685 MW during commissioning with practically no additional engineering works required which is testament to the robust design standards rigorously upheld by the CEGB.

The turbines were designed to be flexible in operation with fast responses to changes in required output. There are also 3 gas turbine units manufactured by GEC capable of 35 MW each which are capable of starting up the station should there be a complete collapse of the grid system.

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Littlebrook Image Gallery

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At the time of opening in the early 1970s Longannet was the largest power station in Europe with a capacity of 2,400 MW. Designed by Scottish architects Robert Matthew, Johnson Marshall & Partners, construction began in 1965 on land reclaimed from the Firth of Forth using ash from the Kincardine power station. The first electricity was generated in 1970 and the station was running at full capacity by 1973 once construction of all units was complete.

Longannet consumed up to 4.5million tonnes of coal per year. The coal was originally supplied via conveyors directly from the nearby Longannet Colliery until its closure in 2002. After that time coal was delivered via rail or road to the station’s coal store which could hold two million tonnes.

Each of the four front-wall-fired boilers, manufactured by Foster Wheeler John Brown, would burn 250 tonnes of coal per hour at full load. Fuel was fed to the boilers from 8 Pulverised Fuel Mills per boiler, each capable of processing 40 tonnes of coal per hour. Each boiler provided around 1,800 tonnes per hour of steam at a pressure of 168 bars and a temperature of 568°C to the turbo-generator sets. The four English Electric turbine sets were each arranged in two lines with a cross-compound arrangement, driving 8 x 300 MW GEC turbo generators.

Cooling water was drawn from the Firth of Forth a rate of 327,000 cubic metres per hour. Longannet did not have any cooling towers, instead discharging its cooling water into a mile long cooling channel, where heat was dissipated before the water reached a wide part of the Forth.

In 2003 Longannet was identified as Scotland’s largest source of pollution. The power station closed in 2016 after 46 years of producing electricity. The closure marked the end of coal-fired generation in Scotland.

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Carbon Capture and Storage

The UK’s first ever Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) unit was commissioned at the station in 2009. CCS is a technology that can capture 90% or more of the carbon dioxide (CO₂) emissions produced from the use of fossil fuels in electricity generation. The captured CO₂ is then transported for permanent storage in depleted oil and gas fields.

The unit was closed in 2011 after it became clear that it was not financially viable. Plans for a UK Government funded project to convert Longannet to CCS were abandoned in 2011 and no further plans for CCS at Longannet were announced.

The Rugeley power stations were a series of two coal-fired power stations located on the River Trent at Rugeley in Staffordshire. Construction of the first power station at the site, Rugeley ‘A’ station started in 1956 and station’s generating sets were commissioned between 1961 and 1962.

The ‘A’ station took coal directly from the neighbouring Lea Hall Colliery by conveyor belt. The colliery was put into production some 6 months before the first generating unit was commissioned in the power station. This was the first joint venture between the Central Electricity Generating Board (CEGB) and the National Coal Board (NCB). The Lea Hall colliery was closed on 24 January 1991, meaning all coal burned in the stations needed to be delivered by rail.

Construction of Rugeley ‘B’ power station began in 1965, with completion of the station in 1972. It had an output of 1,000 megawatts (MW) and had a 400 kilovolt (kV) connection to the national grid. With both stations in operation, 850 people were employed at the stations in 1983.

The two stations were initially operated by the Central Electricity Generating Board, but following privatisation in 1990, were handed over to National Power. In July 1996 the Rugeley B power station was bought by Eastern Generation, itself acquired by TXU Europe. Rugeley B was subsequently sold to International Power plc in July 2001. It remains under the same ownership, though International Power later merged with GDF Suez in 2011.

Construction of a Flue Gas Desulfurization plant started in early 2007 and it was commissioned at the B station in 2009. This allowed the station to comply with environmental legislation in force at the time and continue generating electricity.

In February 2016 it was announced that the power station would close in the summer of 2016. An announcement by owners, Engie blamed a deterioration in market conditions which included a fall in market prices and increasing carbon costs. Rugeley Power Station ceased all operations on Wednesday 8 June 2016. Decommissioning began in June 2016. All buildings and structures on site have now been demolished.

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Documents and Schematics