Rye House Power Station is a 715 MW

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 close to

Rye House railway station Rye House railway station is on the Hertford East branch line off the West Anglia Main Line in the east of England, serving the Rye House area of Hoddesdon, Hertfordshire. It is down the line from London Liverpool Street and is situated between ...

Hoddesdon Hoddesdon () is a town in the Borough of Broxbourne, Hertfordshire, lying entirely within the London Metropolitan Area and Greater London Urban Area. The area is on the River Lea and the Lee Navigation along with the New River. Hoddesdon is ...

Hertfordshire Hertfordshire ( or ; often abbreviated Herts) is one of the home counties in southern England. It borders Bedfordshire and Cambridgeshire to the north, Essex to the east, Greater London to the south, and Buckinghamshire to the west. For govern ...

History

The current station was built on the site of an earlier 128 MW

coal-fired power station A coal-fired power station or coal power plant is a thermal power station which burns coal to generate electricity. Worldwide, there are about 8,500 coal-fired power stations totaling over 2,000 gigawatts Nameplate capacity, capacity. They ...

built in 1951, and an open cycle gas turbine plant commissioned in 1965 (see below). Both these stations were closed on 1 November 1982 and were subsequently demolished. The gas-fired station, near

, is about eighteen miles north of

London London is the capital and largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary down to the North Sea, and has been a majo ...

, was built in the early 1990s and fully commissioned in November 1993 and officially opened in April 1994. Output from the station is enough to meet the daily power needs of nearly a million people - almost the population of Hertfordshire. Rye House is owned and operated by VPI, part of the

Vitol Vitol is a Swiss-based multinational energy and commodity trading company that was founded in Rotterdam in 1966 by Henk Viëtor and Jacques Detiger. Though trading, logistics and distribution are at the core of its business, these are complemente ...

group.

Specification

Rye House was built by

Siemens AG 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'', '' ...

. It has three Siemens V94.2 gas turbines rotating at 3000

rpm Revolutions per minute (abbreviated rpm, RPM, rev/min, r/min, or with the notation min−1) is a unit of rotational speed or rotational frequency for rotating machines. Standards ISO 80000-3:2019 defines a unit of rotation as the dimensionl ...

. Each drives a generator producing 150 MW at a terminal voltage of 11 kV and exhausts at 540 °C into a Babcock Energy steam generator. The three steam generators supply a single Siemens

turbogenerator A turbo generator is an electric generator connected to the shaft of a steam turbine or gas turbine for the generation of electric power. Large steam-powered turbo generators provide the majority of the world's electricity and are also use ...

producing 250 MW at 15.75 kV. The combined outputs feed the National Grid at 400 kV. The station has the largest air-cooled condenser in Europe. The chimneys are 58 m high. The station employs thirty-seven people.

Previous power stations

The 128 MW coal-fired Rye House power station was built by the

British Electricity Authority The British Electricity Authority (BEA) was established as the central British electricity authority in 1948 under the nationalisation of Great Britain's electricity supply industry enacted by the Electricity Act 1947. The BEA was responsible for ...

(later 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 ...

) and was commissioned in 1951. The station was located between the London to Cambridge railway line and the

Lee Navigation The Lee Navigation is a canalised river incorporating the River Lea (also called the River Lee along the sections that are navigable). It flows from Hertford Castle Weir to the River Thames at Bow Creek; its first lock is Hertford Lock and its ...

, providing access for the delivery of coal and a water supply for condensing steam in the plant. The building was designed by the architect

Sir Giles Gilbert Scott Sir Giles Gilbert Scott (9 November 1880 – 8 February 1960) was a British architect known for his work on the New Bodleian Library, Cambridge University Library, Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford, Battersea Power Station, Liverpool Cathedral, and ...

in a steel-framed, brick-clad ‘cathedral of power’ style exemplified by Scott's

Battersea Battersea is a large district in south London, part of the London Borough of Wandsworth, England. It is centred southwest of Charing Cross and extends along the south bank of the River Thames. It includes the Battersea Park. History Batter ...

and Bankside power stations. The station had single chimney and three reinforced concrete cooling towers. Each tower had a capacity of 1.3 million gallons per hour (1.64 m³/s). A dock was built on the Lee Navigation adjacent to the power station for unloading coal in addition to the railway sidings. The station comprised four 30 MW Richardsons Westgarth-Parsons turbo-alternators, generating at 33 kV. These were supplied with steam from the Babcock pulverised coal boilers which produced a total of 1.4 million pounds per hour (176.4 kg/s) of steam at 600 psi (41.4 bar) and 454 °C. In 1965, an open cycle gas turbine power station was built adjacent to the steam station. This comprised two 70 MW oil-fired gas turbine/generator sets. This was a peak shaving plant designed to operate at times of maximum demand. The output from the steam plant and the gas turbine plant are shown in the following charts.CEGB ''Annual Report and Accounts'', various years Rye House (steam) power station output 1954–1982 in GWh.Rye House (gas turbine) power station output 1965–1982 in GWh.Rye House power station was decommissioned on 1 November 1982. It was subsequently demolished and then replaced by the CCGT station.

References

External links

Other CCGTs in eastern England

Photos of station on geograph
{{East of England powerstations Natural gas-fired power stations in England Buildings and structures in Hertfordshire Power stations in the East of England Hoddesdon

History

Specification

Previous power stations

See also

References

External links