The Wilton power station refers to a series of

coal Coal is a combustible black or brownish-black sedimentary rock, formed as rock strata called coal seams. Coal is mostly carbon with variable amounts of other elements, chiefly hydrogen, sulfur, oxygen, and nitrogen. Coal is formed when ...

oil An oil is any nonpolar chemical substance that is composed primarily of hydrocarbons and is hydrophobic (does not mix with water) & lipophilic (mixes with other oils). Oils are usually flammable and surface active. Most oils are unsaturated ...

gas Gas is one of the four fundamental states of matter (the others being solid, liquid, and plasma). A pure gas may be made up of individual atoms (e.g. a noble gas like neon), elemental molecules made from one type of atom (e.g. oxygen), or ...

and biomass fired CHP

power station A power station, also referred to as a power plant and sometimes generating station or generating plant, is an industrial facility for the generation of electric power. Power stations are generally connected to an electrical grid. Many ...

s which provide electricity and heat for the Wilton International Complex, with excess electricity being sold to the National Grid. It is located on the Wilton site in

Redcar and Cleveland Redcar and Cleveland is a borough with unitary authority status in North Yorkshire, England. Its main settlements are Redcar, South Bank, Eston, Brotton, Guisborough, the Greater Eston part of Middlesbrough, Loftus, Saltburn and Skelton. Th ...

, south of the town of

Middlesbrough Middlesbrough ( ) is a town on the southern bank of the River Tees in North Yorkshire, England. It is near the North York Moors national park. It is the namesake and main town of its local borough council area. Until the early 1800s, the a ...

in North East England. The station has provided for the site since opening in 1952, when it was operated by ICI. The station is currently owned and operated by

SembCorp Industries Sembcorp Industries (Sembcorp) is an energy and Urban planning, urban development company. Sembcorp's Sembcorp Marine, marine division provided a variety of services, including the engineering and construction of offshore platforms for oil ex ...

. It comprises a variety of generating sets, with units of different ages and various fuels. The station is currently mainly coal and oil fired, but also has a CCGT unit. Wilton 10 was opened at the station in 2007, the UK's first ever large scale biomass only power station. The power station's total generating capacity across all of its units is 227

megawatt The watt (symbol: W) is the unit of power or radiant flux in the International System of Units (SI), equal to 1 joule per second or 1 kg⋅m2⋅s−3. It is used to quantify the rate of energy transfer. The watt is named after James ...

s. There are plans to build another plant, Wilton 11, a waste to energy plant.

History

Wilton Power Station has been generating electricity and providing steam to the plants on the Wilton International complex since March 1952. A secondary turbine commissioned at the station in November 1951 is still operating there today. For a long time the station was operated by Imperial Chemical Industries (ICI), but they sold the station to American company

Enron Enron Corporation was an American energy, commodities, and services company based in Houston, Texas. It was founded by Kenneth Lay in 1985 as a merger between Lay's Houston Natural Gas and InterNorth, both relatively small regional compani ...

in November 1998. In early 2002 Enron went

bankrupt Bankruptcy is a legal process through which people or other entities who cannot repay debts to creditors may seek relief from some or all of their debts. In most jurisdictions, bankruptcy is imposed by a court order, often initiated by the debtor ...

, and the station was sold to

SembCorp Sembcorp Industries (Sembcorp) is an energy and urban development company. Sembcorp's marine division provided a variety of services, including the engineering and construction of offshore platforms for oil extraction, until it was demerg ...

. The station has been approved as a "Good quality" combined heat and power plant under the CHPQA registration scheme. This means that despite burning fossil fuels like coal and oil, the station is exempt from the

Climate Change Levy The Climate Change Levy (CCL) is a tax on energy delivered to non-domestic users in the United Kingdom. Scope and purpose Introduced on 1 April 2001 under the Finance Act 2000, it was forecast to cut annual emissions by 2.5 million tonnes ...

, a tax which otherwise would have been put on the fuels supplied to the station and the electricity generated by it.

Specification

Wilton Power Station is a 197

(MW)

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 ...

, which is currently in constant operation. Over the years, nine

boiler A boiler is a closed vessel in which fluid (generally water) is heated. The fluid does not necessarily boil. The heated or vaporized fluid exits the boiler for use in various processes or heating applications, including water heating, centr ...

s have been in operation at the station. In the 1970s the station had a generating capacity of 300 MW and produced 1,200 tonnes of steam per hour. In this period the station was burning waste from the chemical site, byproducts such as: liquid petroleum gas, tars, waste lubricating oils, emulsion residues, waste from aromatic and olefin plants and hydrogen gas from the nylon plant. There are currently three generating sets in operation at the station, two of which are fired by

, the other of which is a

gas turbine A gas turbine, also called a combustion turbine, is a type of continuous flow internal combustion engine. The main parts common to all gas turbine engines form the power-producing part (known as the gas generator or core) and are, in the directio ...

fuelled by

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 ...

. Each of the two coal-fired generating sets are powered by a high pressure boiler, which are each capable of producing a continuous maximum rate of 280 tonnes per hour of steam, at 1,700 psig. Each boiler is then connected to a 33 MW turbine generator. Intermediate pressure steam is then either diverted and fed to other plants in the complex, or sent to three secondary generating sets. After the secondary generating sets, low pressure steam can then be distributed to plants in the complex. Boiler Number 6, one of the coal boilers, was mothballed in 1997, however in 2001 it was refurbished and restored to operation. In 2002, one of the secondary turbines was replaced by a newer unit. In the same year, an automation project involving the boilers, turbines and ancillary equipment was completed.

Operations

Coal is brought to the power station by

rail Rail or rails may refer to: Rail transport *Rail transport and related matters *Rail (rail transport) or railway lines, the running surface of a railway Arts and media Film * ''Rails'' (film), a 1929 Italian film by Mario Camerini * ''Rail'' ( ...

to the Wilton rail delivery terminal and unloaded at the station using a merry-go-round system. The coal is provided by a small number of

opencast Open-pit mining, also known as open-cast or open-cut mining and in larger contexts mega-mining, is a surface mining technique of extracting rock (geology), rock or minerals from the earth from an open-air pit, sometimes known as a Borrow pit, b ...

mines in

Northumberland Northumberland () is a county in Northern England, one of two counties in England which border with Scotland. Notable landmarks in the county include Alnwick Castle, Bamburgh Castle, Hadrian's Wall and Hexham Abbey. It is bordered by land ...

. Electricity is generated for the major plants on the Wilton complex at 11 kilovolts (kV) and distributed throughout the complex using one of the largest privately owned distribution systems in the world. This system is connected to the National Grid so that surplus electricity can be distributed using four National Grid owned transformers at 66 kV and 275 kV. On top of this, the station produces around 4,000,000 tonnes of steam per year for the plants on the complex. In late 2003, plans to install a 40 MW

at the station were finally fulfilled, after they were put off because of then owner Enron's bankruptcy. The gas turbine installation was completed in 2004, and it replaced an oil-fired boiler at the station, resulting in reduced emissions from the station. However, the station has retained the flexibility to fire oil as a backup to coal and gas. In October 2003, SembCorp applied to the Environment Agency for permission to burn 110,000 tonnes of cow fat (tallow) from the carcasses of animals slaughtered during the BSE Crisis of 1996. The tallow bought was a large portion of the 200,000 tonne stockpile stored on farms in

Merseyside Merseyside ( ) is a metropolitan and ceremonial county in North West England, with a population of 1.38 million. It encompasses both banks of the Mersey Estuary and comprises five metropolitan boroughs: Knowsley, St Helens, Sefton, Wi ...

and near

London London is the capital and List of urban areas in the United Kingdom, 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 dow ...

. The tallow was brought to the station by road tanker from Merseyside. At the power station it was stored in a tanker, awaiting burning. Following consultation and a 10,000 tonne trial burn between March and May 2004, permission for the burning of the tallow was granted in August 2004. Following a £55 million boiler overhaul in 2005, the station began co-firing biomass.

Wilton 10

SembCorp announced plans to build the UK's first wood-only burning power station in March 2005. The Wilton 10 Power Station (so called because it was the tenth boiler constructed at the Wilton Power Station) cost £30 million to construct and was built alongside the other Wilton Power Station units. It began generating electricity in September 2007, but was officially opened on 12 November 2007 by Energy Minister

Malcolm Wicks Malcolm Hunt Wicks (1 July 1947 – 29 September 2012) was a British Labour Party politician and academic specialising in social policy. He was a member of parliament (MP) from 1992, first for Croydon North West and then for Croydon North, unt ...

. 400 people were employed in the station's construction and there are 15 permanent jobs at the station. The station burns 300,000 tonnes of a combination of sustainable wood,

sawmill A sawmill (saw mill, saw-mill) or lumber mill is a facility where logs are cut into lumber. Modern sawmills use a motorized saw to cut logs lengthwise to make long pieces, and crosswise to length depending on standard or custom sizes (dimensi ...

waste and otherwise unusable wood offcuts a year to produce 30

s (MW) of electricity, as well as 10 MW of thermal energy in the form of steam, which is piped for use in the rest of the Wilton complex. It operates separately from the

. 80,000 tonnes of waste wood is supplied to the station each year from neighbouring company UK Wood Recycling.

Wilton 11

On 9 August 2010, Sembcorp announced they were teaming up with SUEZ UK to build a £200 million waste to energy plant alongside the current plants, known as Wilton 11. The plant would treat up to 400,000 tonnes of waste a year to generate 35 MW of electricity. Between 150 and 200 jobs were created in construction, and around 50 permanent jobs created when the plant was completed. There is a possibility that the plant could be supplied with waste using the site's already existing rail link. The plant began operation in late May 2016 and burns the compacted domestic waste of Merseyside brought by rail from Knowsley, near Liverpool. ''Branch Line News'' No 1271, Branch Line Society, 17 December 2016 The plant generates enough power for 63,000 homes.

References

External links

{{North East Power Stations Energy infrastructure completed in 1953 Energy infrastructure completed in 2007 Power stations in North East England Buildings and structures in North Yorkshire Natural gas-fired power stations in England Cogeneration power stations in England