Peterborough Power Station
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Peterborough Power Station is a 360MW gas-fired power station at Eastern Industry,
Fengate Fengate is a predominantly industrial area of the city of Peterborough, in the Peterborough district, in the ceremonial county of Cambridgeshire, England. For electoral purposes it forms part of Peterborough East ward. The industrial estate is k ...
in the city of
Peterborough Peterborough () is a cathedral city in Cambridgeshire, east of England. It is the largest part of the City of Peterborough unitary authority district (which covers a larger area than Peterborough itself). It was part of Northamptonshire until ...
,
Cambridgeshire Cambridgeshire (abbreviated Cambs.) is a Counties of England, county in the East of England, bordering Lincolnshire to the north, Norfolk to the north-east, Suffolk to the east, Essex and Hertfordshire to the south, and Bedfordshire and North ...
in the
United Kingdom The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom (UK) or Britain, is a country in Europe, off the north-western coast of the continental mainland. It comprises England, Scotland, Wales and North ...
. It employs around forty people. The power station was commissioned in December 1993 with construction starting in January 1991. It is currently owned by Whitetower Holdings UK Limited, an affiliate of Rockland Capital, LP after a £20M agreement was made with
Centrica Centrica plc is a British multinational energy and services company with its headquarters in Windsor, Berkshire. Its principal activity is the supply of electricity and gas to consumers in the United Kingdom and Ireland. It is the largest su ...
Energy officially owned by Centrica PB Ltd. Peterborough Power Ltd, the station's original operating name, was bought by Centrica Plc from
Dallas Dallas () is the List of municipalities in Texas, third largest city in Texas and the largest city in the Dallas–Fort Worth metroplex, the List of metropolitan statistical areas, fourth-largest metropolitan area in the United States at 7.5 ...
-based
TXU TXU or txu may refer to: *TXU Corporation (formerly "Texas Utilities") a USA group companies **TXU Energy, energy generation subsidiary of TXU Corp. **TXU Energi, subsidiary of TXU Europe, formerly "The Energy Company" *txu, ISO:639 code for the K ...
Corp. in October 2001. Centrica was created in 1997 when
British Gas Plc British Gas plc was an energy and home services provider in the United Kingdom. It was formed when the British Gas Corporation was privatised as a result of the Gas Act 1986, instigated by the government of Margaret Thatcher and superseding the G ...
demerged into Centrica Plc and
BG Group BG Group plc was a British multinational oil and gas company headquartered in Reading, United Kingdom. On 8 April 2015, Royal Dutch Shell announced that it had reached an agreement to acquire BG Group for $70 billion, subject to regulatory and ...
Plc; it owns the rights to the British Gas name for use in the domestic market. A previous coal-fired power station in Peterborough was located on the north side of the river, on the site of what is now the Rivergate shopping centre. Demolished in the mid 1980s, all that remains is its substation on the other side of the river, directly south from the power station's former site.


Technical specifications

Peterborough is a CCGT type power station that runs on natural gas. The two
General Electric General Electric Company (GE) is an American multinational conglomerate founded in 1892, and incorporated in New York state and headquartered in Boston. The company operated in sectors including healthcare, aviation, power, renewable energ ...
Frame 9E
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 directi ...
s, each producing 118MWe which connect to a
heat recovery steam generator A heat recovery steam generator (''HRSG'') is an energy recovery heat exchanger that recovers heat from a hot gas stream, such as a combustion turbine or other waste gas stream. It produces steam that can be used in a process (cogeneration) or u ...
powered by exhaust gases at 530 °C (986 °F) which leads to one
steam turbine A steam turbine is a machine that extracts thermal energy from pressurized steam and uses it to do mechanical work on a rotating output shaft. Its modern manifestation was invented by Charles Parsons in 1884. Fabrication of a modern steam turbin ...
running at 3,000 
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 ...
. The generators on the gas turbines have a terminal voltage of 14kV and are rated at 161 MVA. The installation produces enough power for two cities the size of Peterborough. Including the steam turbine, it has a
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 ...
of 48% with a total thermal input of 790MW. The plant has a
black start A black start is the process of restoring an electric power station or a part of an electric grid to operation without relying on the external electric power transmission network to recover from a total or partial shutdown.Knight, U.G. ''Power ...
2.9MW
diesel generator A diesel generator (DG) (also known as a diesel Genset) is the combination of a diesel engine with an electric generator (often an alternator) to generate electrical energy. This is a specific case of engine generator. A diesel compression- ...
and connects to the National Grid at 132kV. It is used for
base load The base load (also baseload) is the minimum level of demand on an electrical grid over a span of time, for example, one week. This demand can be met by unvarying power plants, dispatchable generation, or by a collection of smaller intermittent en ...
and
peak load In electrical engineering, a load profile is a graph of the variation in the electrical load versus time. A load profile will vary according to customer type (typical examples include residential, commercial and industrial), temperature and holi ...
, where it can temporarily produce 400MWe, although actual power depends on local humidity and temperature. The chimneys are 197 feet (60 m) and 148 feet (45 m) high.


Water management

There is an air-cooled condenser to eliminate the need for cooling water. It makes use of a
grey water Greywater (or grey water, sullage, also spelled gray water in the United States) refers to domestic wastewater generated in households or office buildings from streams without fecal contamination, i.e., all streams except for the wastewater from ...
supply provided by
Anglian Water Anglian Water is a water company that operates in the East of England. It was formed in 1989 under the partial Water privatisation in England and Wales, privatisation of the water industry. It provides water supply, sewerage and sewage treatment ...
’s nearby sewage treatment plant. This grey water prevents the use of clean potable water from the city's supply and reduces the unnecessary use of chemicals to regenerate the ion exchange resins which are used to de-mineralise the water to protect the power station's boilers and steam turbine.


Coal-fired power station

''Peterborough City Corporation'' had owned and operated local electricity supplies from the turn of the twentieth century until the
nationalisation Nationalization (nationalisation in British English) is the process of transforming privately-owned assets into public assets by bringing them under the public ownership of a national government or state. Nationalization usually refers to pri ...
of the electricity industry in 1948. The coal-fired power station at Peterborough was located near Town Bridge on the north side of the
River Nene The River Nene ( or : see below) is a river in the east of England that rises from three sources in Northamptonshire.OS Explorer Map sheet 223, Northampton & Market Harborough, Brixworth & Pitsford Water. The river is about long, about of w ...
. River water was used for condensing steam and for cooling in the station. The power station had high pressure (HP) and low pressure (LP) plant, referring to the steam conditions. In 1961 the oldest LP plant had been installed in 1928 and the oldest in the HP plant in 1951. The HP plant had an installed capacity of 40
megawatts 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 Watt ...
(MW) from two
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 ...
20 MW turbo-alternators. There were three Babcock water tube pulverised fuel boilers each rated at 160,000 lb/hr (20.16 kg/s), giving a total capacity of 480,000 lb/hr (60.48 kg/s), the HP steam conditions were 400
psi Psi, PSI or Ψ may refer to: Alphabetic letters * Psi (Greek) (Ψ, ψ), the 23rd letter of the Greek alphabet * Psi (Cyrillic) (Ѱ, ѱ), letter of the early Cyrillic alphabet, adopted from Greek Arts and entertainment * "Psi" as an abbreviation ...
(27.6
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 427 °C.''CEGB Statistical Yearbook'' (Various dates, 1964-1977). CEGB, London. (Some sources state 425 psi and 825 °F (441 °C)). The HP plant had a single
reinforced concrete Reinforced concrete (RC), also called reinforced cement concrete (RCC) and ferroconcrete, is a composite material in which concrete's relatively low tensile strength and ductility are compensated for by the inclusion of reinforcement having hig ...
chimney. The LP plant had an installed generating capacity of 18 MW, from one 12.5 MW and one 5.5 MW Peter Brotherhood- English Electric turbo-alternators. The total boiler capacity was 210,000 lb/hr (26.4 kg/s) from three Spearling pulverised fuel boilers and the steam conditions were lower than the HP plant at 230 psi (15.9 bar) and 343/371 °C. (Some sources state 260 psi and 750 °F (399 °C)). The LP plant had a single slender chimney, the plant was decommissioned in 1968. Cooling water for condensing steam was drawn from the
River Nene The River Nene ( or : see below) is a river in the east of England that rises from three sources in Northamptonshire.OS Explorer Map sheet 223, Northampton & Market Harborough, Brixworth & Pitsford Water. The river is about long, about of w ...
. In 1961 the total electricity output from the LP plant was 8.76 GWh, while the output from HP plant was 113.277 GWh. The total electricity output, in GWh, over the period 1954-77 was as follows:Peterborough power station was decommissioned in 1977 and demolished in the mid-1980s.


References


External links


Peterborough Power Station
{{coord, 52.5769, N, 0.204, W, type:landmark_region:GB, display=title Buildings and structures in Peterborough Natural gas-fired power stations in England Power stations in the East of England