Marchwood Power Station is an 898.1 MW

gas-fired power station A gas-fired power plant or gas-fired power station or natural gas power plant is a thermal power station which burns natural gas to electricity generation, generate electricity. List of natural gas power stations, Natural gas power stations gen ...

Marchwood Marchwood is a village and civil parish located in Hampshire, England, United Kingdom. It lies between Totton and Hythe on the western shore of Southampton Water and directly east of the New Forest. The population of the village in the 201 ...

, near

Southampton Southampton () is a port city in the ceremonial county of Hampshire in southern England. It is located approximately south-west of London and west of Portsmouth. The city forms part of the South Hampshire built-up area, which also covers Po ...

, England. It is situated beside estuary of the

River Test The River Test is a chalk stream in Hampshire in the south of England. It rises at Ashe near Basingstoke and flows southwards for to Southampton Water. Settlements on the Test include the towns of Stockbridge and Romsey. Below the village o ...

where it meets

Southampton Water Southampton Water is a tidal estuary north of the Solent and the Isle of Wight in England. The city of Southampton lies at its most northerly point, where the estuaries of the River Test and River Itchen meet. Along its salt marsh-fringed wes ...

, opposite the

Port of Southampton The Port of Southampton is a passenger and cargo port in the central part of the south coast of England. The modern era in the history of the Port of Southampton began when the first dock was inaugurated in 1843. The port has been owned and op ...

. It is built on the site of an oil-fired power station, demolished in the 1990s. The station is operated by the Marchwood Power Limited Independent Team.

Overview

Marchwood Power Station is next to

on Marchwood Industrial Estate. It is a

combined cycle gas turbine A combined cycle power plant is an assembly of heat engines that work in tandem from the same source of heat, converting it into mechanical energy. On land, when used to make electricity the most common type is called a combined cycle gas turb ...

(CCGT) power station. The plant uses compressed air and gas to power one turbine and then uses exhaust gases from that process to boil water and power a steam turbine. The power station generates 898.1MW of electricity. Water from the

is used as part of the cooling process. Around 45 people work at the power plant.

History

Oil-fired plant

The first power plant at Marchwood was built in the 1950s. It was originally designed to be a coal-fired plant.''Civil Engineering'', (1957), Volume 52, page 1266 Plans were changed when the station was at an advanced stage of construction and it was equipped for burning fuel-oil, brought to the station by tankers from

Fawley Refinery Fawley Refinery is an oil refinery located at Fawley, Hampshire, England. The refinery is owned by Esso Petroleum Company Limited, a subsidiary of Exxon Mobil Corporation, which acquired the site in 1925. Situated on Southampton Water, it was ...

seven miles lower down

. It was also fed from the refinery by an 11.3 km pipeline which delivered oil to four storage tanks holding 26,000 tonnes. The station was authorised in August 1951, construction began in 1952 and the first foundation stone was laid in September 1954.''The Engineer'', (1956), Volume 201, page 494 The first generating set started producing electricity in December 1955. This was followed by the second set in March 1956, then further sets in August 1956, December 1956, March 1957, September 1958 and December 1958. The power station eventually comprised eight

English Electric N.º UIC: 9094 110 1449-3 (Takargo Rail) The English Electric Company Limited (EE) was a British industrial manufacturer formed after the Armistice of 11 November 1918, armistice of World War I by amalgamating five businesses which, during th ...

60MW units with a combined power of 480MW. The John Thompson boilers delivered 592.0 kg/s of steam at 62.1

bar Bar or BAR may refer to: Food and drink * Bar (establishment), selling alcoholic beverages * Candy bar * Chocolate bar Science and technology * Bar (river morphology), a deposit of sediment * Bar (tropical cyclone), a layer of cloud * Bar (u ...

and 482 °C. The first four units were fully commissioned in 1957, with the remaining four units on stream by 1958. The electricity output of the station was: Annual output of Marchwood power station, GWh.In the year 1980-81 the

thermal efficiency In thermodynamics, the thermal efficiency (\eta_) is a dimensionless performance measure of a device that uses thermal energy, such as an internal combustion engine, steam turbine, steam engine, boiler, furnace, refrigerator, ACs etc. For a he ...

was 20.77 per cent. Marchwood power station was closed in 1983.

Marchwood Engineering Laboratories

Beginning in the early 1960s, a site next to the power station was the home of Marchwood Engineering Laboratories operated by the

Central Electricity Generating Board The Central Electricity Generating Board (CEGB) was responsible for electricity generation, transmission and bulk sales in England and Wales from 1958 until privatisation of the electricity industry in the 1990s. It was established on 1 Januar ...

. It was one of their three national research laboratories. The centre developed a broad-based research programme concentrating on structural, combustion and mechanical engineering, and included techniques, design codes, instrumentation and machines for welding, nuclear reactor inspection, turbines and other plant. A low-speed

wind tunnel Wind tunnels are large tubes with air blowing through them which are used to replicate the interaction between air and an object flying through the air or moving along the ground. Researchers use wind tunnels to learn more about how an aircraft ...

, built to study power station emissions, was also built there. Following privatisation of the electricity industry, Marchwood Engineering Laboratories were allocated to PowerGen, but that company was engaged in comparatively little research, and the rundown and closure of the site were announced in 1989.

Alternative energy projects

In 1979 a geothermal test well was sunk at Marchwood Power Station in the UK's first project to tap geothermal heat. Drilling was completed to a depth of 2600 metres in early 1981.Proceedings of the Institution of Civil Engineers, (1983), Volume 74, page 50 This revealed an aquifer at a temperature of 73 Celsius at a depth of 1660 metres. Although the Department of Energy considered the resource to be uneconomic, a similar borehole sunk nearby in Southampton was later utilised to provide local heating in the city.Roger Greeno, Fred Hall, (2009), ''Building Services Handbook'', page 592. Routledge. In 1983 Marchwood Power Station was the site of the UK's first commercial solar-powered electricity generator, when a 30 kW system was built by BP Solar in the defunct coalyard of the power station.Philip Wolfe, (2013), ''Solar Photovoltaic projects in the mainstream power market'', page 25. Routledge. It was decommissioned a few years later.

Gas-fired plant

Marchwood Power Station, East Road - geograph

The gas-fired plant was built by Marchwood Power Ltd, a joint venture between SSE and ESB International. The power station cost £380 million and was officially opened on 28 January 2010. In 2013 ESB sold off its 50% stake in Marchwood for €180 million to a unit of the reinsurance company

Munich Re Munich Re Group or Munich Reinsurance Company (german: Münchener Rück; Münchener Rückversicherungs-Gesellschaft) is a German multinational insurance company based in Munich, Germany. It is one of the world's leading reinsurers. ERGO, a Muni ...

References

External links

Marchwood Power Limited
{{South East powerstations Natural gas-fired power stations in England Power stations in South East England