Richborough Energy Park is a site of non-traditional power generation, on the site of the former Richborough power station close to the mouth of the River Stour near

Sandwich A sandwich is a food typically consisting of vegetables, sliced cheese or meat, placed on or between slices of bread, or more generally any dish wherein bread serves as a container or wrapper for another food type. The sandwich began as a po ...

, on the east coast of

Kent Kent is a county in South East England and one of the home counties. It borders Greater London to the north-west, Surrey to the west and East Sussex to the south-west, and Essex to the north across the estuary of the River Thames; it faces ...

England England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Wales to its west and Scotland to its north. The Irish Sea lies northwest and the Celtic Sea to the southwest. It is separated from continental Europe b ...

Site history

The original Richborough power station operated from 1962 to 1996, with final demolition being undertaken in 2012. It originally burnt coal, but later converted to oil and that to the burning of

Orimulsion Orimulsion is a registered trademark name for a bitumen-based fuel that was developed for industrial use by Intevep, the Research and Development Affiliate of Petroleos de Venezuela SA (PDVSA), following earlier collaboration on oil emulsions with ...

. The station was also the site of an experimental wind turbine in 1989, which at 1MW was the biggest then installed anywhere in the United Kingdom.

Current use

The national grid interconnector from the original power station is still in place, and is now the grid link for the offshore

Thanet Wind Farm The Thanet Wind Farm (also sometimes called Thanet Offshore Wind Farm) is an offshore wind farm off the coast of Thanet district in Kent, England. On commissioning it was the world's largest offshore wind farm. It has a nameplate capacity (max ...

. The site is the landing site for the ±400 kV 1,000 MW HVDC power cable from Belgium called

Nemo Link Nemo Link is an HVDC submarine power cable between Richborough Energy Park in Kent, the United Kingdom and Zeebrugge, Belgium. The project is a joint venture between British National Grid and Belgian Elia. The electrical interconnector is the ...

, built by Siemens, which entered commercial service on 31 January 2019.

Plans

The current owner of the site, BFL Management Ltd, plan to bring the site back into use as a £750 million green energy park. There are additional plans to create additional recycling and green energy facilities on site, including an

anaerobic digester Anaerobic digestion is a sequence of processes by which microorganisms break down biodegradable material in the absence of oxygen. The process is used for industrial or domestic purposes to manage waste or to produce fuels. Much of the fermen ...

, a waste processing plant, a biomass combined heat and power generator, a

pyrolysis The pyrolysis (or devolatilization) process is the thermal decomposition of materials at elevated temperatures, often in an inert atmosphere. It involves a change of chemical composition. The word is coined from the Greek-derived elements ''py ...

plant and a peak demand 30MW diesel generator. When fully operational, the park could provide up to 1,400MW of power, employing 100 full-time equivalent, with up to 500 jobs in the construction phase.

References

Power stations in South East England {{UK-powerstation-stub