Thorpe Marsh Power Station was a 1 GW
coal-fired power station near
Barnby Dun in
South Yorkshire
South Yorkshire is a ceremonial county, ceremonial and metropolitan county, metropolitan county in the Yorkshire and Humber Region of England. The county has four council areas which are the cities of City of Doncaster, Doncaster and City of Sh ...
,
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 ...
. The station was commissioned in 1963 and closed in 1994. In 2011, permission was given for the construction of a gas-fired power station on the site.
History
Construction and operation, (1959–1994)
Construction of the station began in 1959; it was built as a prototype for all the large modern power stations in the UK. It was commissioned between 1963 and 1965.
Thorpe Marsh was one of the CEGB’s twenty steam power stations with the highest
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 ...
; in 1963–4 the thermal efficiency was 31.50 per cent, 32.76 per cent in 1964–5, and 33.09 per cent in 1965–6.
There were 2 × 28 MW auxiliary gas turbines on the site, these had been commissioned in December 1966.
The plant was officially opened in 1967.
The station contained two 550 MW generating units with
cross compound turbines, supplied from a single boiler. Steam was supplied at at .
The annual electricity output of Thorpe Marsh was:
On 7 January 1973, four workmen died. A
coroner's report gave a verdict of accidental death; subsequently the Factory Inspectorate began legal proceedings against 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 Janua ...
(CEGB) for breaches in safety provisions.
After the
privatisation of the CEGB in 1990, the station was operated by
National Power
National power is defined as the sum of all resources available to a nation in the pursuit of national objectives. Assessing the national power of political entities was already a matter of relevance during the classical antiquity, the middle ages ...
. The station subsequently closed in 1994.
Post closure (1994–)
The site was acquired by
Able UK in 1995.
During the
2007 United Kingdom floods
A series of large floods occurred in parts of the United Kingdom during the summer of 2007. The worst of the flooding occurred across Scotland on 14 June; East Yorkshire and the Midlands on 15 June; Yorkshire, the Midlands, Gloucestershire, Here ...
, the 400 kV substation at the site was temporarily shut down on 27 June, whilst the 275 kV substation was not affected; operational service was fully restored by early 28 June.
In October 2011, the
Department of Energy and Climate Change
The Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC) was a department of the Government of the United Kingdom created on 3 October 2008, by Prime Minister Gordon Brown to take over some of the functions related to energy of the Department for Busin ...
approved the construction of a 1,500 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 ...
power station at Thorpe Marsh by Thorpe Marsh Power Limited (parent Acorn Power Developments, see
Acorn Energy
Acorn Energy Inc. is a NASDAQ-listed conglomerate investing in electricity generation and security. It was founded by George Morgenstern in 1984 as Decision Systems, Inc. and was taken public by Laidlaw Securities. The name was later changed to ...
) with an estimated cost of £984 million.
Thorpe Marsh Power Limited proposed an initial capacity of 960 MW.
The proposed development would also require the construction of an gas pipeline from
Camblesforth
Camblesforth is a village and civil parish in the Selby District of North Yorkshire, England. According to the 2001 Census the civil parish had a population of 1,526, increasing to 1,568 at the 2011 Census. The village is south of Selby and w ...
;
Thorpe Marsh Power Limited is expected to submit an application for the gas pipeline in late 2014.
Able UK demolished the original power station's
cooling towers
A cooling tower is a device that rejects waste heat to the atmosphere through the cooling of a coolant stream, usually a water stream to a lower temperature. Cooling towers may either use the evaporation of water to remove process heat and ...
in 2012.
References
Further reading
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External links
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* Images of derelict power station .
* Images from .
{{Yorkshire Powerstations
Coal-fired power stations in England
Buildings and structures in Doncaster
Power stations in Yorkshire and the Humber
Former power stations in England