Kårstø Power Station is an unused

natural gas Natural gas (also called fossil gas or simply gas) is a naturally occurring mixture of gaseous hydrocarbons consisting primarily of methane in addition to various smaller amounts of other higher alkanes. Low levels of trace gases like carbo ...

-fired

thermal power plant A thermal power station is a type of power station in which heat energy is converted to electrical energy. In a steam-generating cycle heat is used to boil water in a large pressure vessel to produce high-pressure steam, which drives a stea ...

located at the

Kårstø Kårstø is an industrial facility located near the village of Susort, along the Boknafjorden, in the municipality of Tysvær in Rogaland county, Norway. The site features a number of natural gas processing plants that refine natural gas and conde ...

industrial site in the southwestern part of the municipality of

Tysvær Tysvær is a municipality in Rogaland county, Norway. It is part of the Haugalandet region. The municipality is located on the Haugalandet peninsula on the northern side of the Boknafjorden, just east of the towns of Kopervik and Haugesund. Th ...

Rogaland Rogaland () is a Counties of Norway, county in Western Norway, bordering the North Sea to the west and the counties of Vestland to the north, Vestfold og Telemark to the east and Agder to the east and southeast. In 2020, it had a population of 47 ...

county,

Norway Norway, officially the Kingdom of Norway, is a Nordic country in Northern Europe, the mainland territory of which comprises the western and northernmost portion of the Scandinavian Peninsula. The remote Arctic island of Jan Mayen and t ...

. The station lies along the

Boknafjorden Boknafjord or Boknafjorden ( en, Bokna Fjord) is a fjord located in Rogaland county, Norway. The huge fjord lies between the cities of Stavanger and Haugesund and dominates the central part of the county. The main part of the fjord is shared bet ...

, about east of the town of

Kopervik Kopervik is the largest town on the island of Karmøy in Rogaland county, Norway. It is also the administrative centre of the municipality of Karmøy. It is part of the traditional district of Haugaland. The town was also an independent municipa ...

. The power plant is owned and operated by the Naturkraft company, which is itself equally owned by

Statkraft Statkraft AS is a hydropower company, fully owned by the Norwegian state. The Statkraft Group is a generator of renewable energy, as well as Norway’s largest and the Nordic region's third largest energy producer. Statkraft develops and generates ...

and

Statoil Equinor ASA (formerly Statoil and StatoilHydro) is a Norwegian state owned enterprise, state-owned multinational energy company headquartered in Stavanger. It is primarily a petroleum company, petroleum company, operating in 36 countries with ad ...

. Initial construction costs totaled about and the turbine was delivered from

Siemens Siemens AG ( ) is a German multinational conglomerate corporation and the largest industrial manufacturing company in Europe headquartered in Munich with branch offices abroad. The principal divisions of the corporation are ''Industry'', '' ...

. The plant opened on 2 November 2007 and was used intermittently for a few years before being mothballed on 3 October 2014. Approval for decommissioning was granted by the Norwegian government in 2016. Dismantling started in September 2017.

Capacity

The power station has an installed capacity of , with an annual production of , equivalent of 3% of the Norwegian electrical production. The power station consumes about 0.6 billion

normal cubic meter Standard temperature and pressure (STP) are standard sets of conditions for experimental measurements to be established to allow comparisons to be made between different sets of data. The most used standards are those of the International Union o ...

natural gas per year, or 0.5% of Norwegian natural gas exports. Emissions are 1.2 million tonnes of

carbon dioxide Carbon dioxide (chemical formula ) is a chemical compound made up of molecules that each have one carbon atom covalently double bonded to two oxygen atoms. It is found in the gas state at room temperature. In the air, carbon dioxide is transpar ...

and 5

parts per million In science and engineering, the parts-per notation is a set of pseudo-units to describe small values of miscellaneous dimensionless quantities, e.g. mole fraction or mass fraction. Since these fractions are quantity-per-quantity measures, they ...

nitrogen oxide Nitrogen oxide may refer to a binary compound of oxygen and nitrogen, or a mixture of such compounds: Charge-neutral *Nitric oxide (NO), nitrogen(II) oxide, or nitrogen monoxide *Nitrogen dioxide (), nitrogen(IV) oxide * Nitrogen trioxide (), or n ...

. The entire output of the station is in

electricity Electricity is the set of physical phenomena associated with the presence and motion of matter that has a property of electric charge. Electricity is related to magnetism, both being part of the phenomenon of electromagnetism, as described ...

, since there is no need for

district heating District heating (also known as heat networks or teleheating) is a system for distributing heat generated in a centralized location through a system of insulated pipes for residential and commercial heating requirements such as space heating a ...

in the uninhabited area. Spill water is emitted at and not utilized.

Decommissioning

The power station has been subject to massive controversy in Norway.

is the first commercial

fossil fuel power station A fossil fuel power station is a thermal power station which burns a fossil fuel, such as coal or natural gas, to produce electricity. Fossil fuel power stations have machinery to convert the heat energy of combustion into mechanical energy, wh ...

in Norway and

environmentalists An environmentalist is a person who is concerned with and/or advocates for the protection of the environment. An environmentalist can be considered a supporter of the goals of the environmental movement, "a political and ethical movement that se ...

have argued that it is unnecessary to open another power station as long as Norway has the highest use of electricity per capita in the world. Also long periods of low efficiency due to gas prices as well as the high cost of upgrading the equipment to lower greenhouse gas emissions led to several periods of temporary closures of the plant. These periods of closures increased the corporate losses of about annually for the plant. On 3 October 2014, Naturkraft AS decided to indefinitely suspend production at the power station due to the market situation. The facility continues to be minimally maintained so that at some point in the future it could resume power production. Decommissioning would have no effect on national power supply. Resume of power production is no longer possible, the dismantling and demolition of the plant started in September 2017.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Karsto Power Station Natural gas-fired power stations in Norway Energy infrastructure completed in 2007 Statkraft Equinor Tysvær

Capacity

Decommissioning

See also

References