Derwent Power Station is a mothballed 214MWe gas-fired power station on Holme Lane near

Spondon Spondon is a ward of the city of Derby, in the ceremonial county of Derbyshire, England. Originally a small village, Spondon dates back to the Domesday Book and it became heavily industrialised in the 19th and early 20th centuries, with com ...

Derby, England Derby ( ) is a City status in the United Kingdom, city and Unitary authorities of England, unitary authority area on the River Derwent, Derbyshire, River Derwent in Derbyshire, England. Derbyshire is named after Derby, which was its original co ...

. It is built on the site of the former Spondon Power Station

History

The current Derwent power station was built on the site of the former Spondon power stations. Spondon A was built in the 1920s by

British Celanese British Celanese was a chemical company based in England. Formed in 1916, it survived as an independent company until 1957 when it became a subsidiary of Courtaulds. History The origins of the company lie with two brothers, Henri and Camille ...

. It was sold to the

Derbyshire and Nottinghamshire Electric Power Company The Derbyshire and Nottinghamshire Electric Power Company Limited provided electricity to consumers in the English midland counties of Derbyshire and Nottinghamshire. Electricity was supplied by the company from 1904 until its abolition upon the n ...

in 1929. It was then nationalised before eventually being sold to

Courtaulds Courtaulds was a United Kingdom-based manufacturer of fabric, clothing, artificial fibres, and chemicals. It was established in 1794 and became the world's leading man-made fibre production company before being broken up in 1990 into Courtauld ...

. Spondon A eventually closed in the early 1980s. In 1959, the Spondon H process steam station opened alongside Spondon A. Spondon H had a capacity of 30 MW using three 10 MW sets, and was unique among the

CEGB 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 ...

s power stations as it was designed primarily to produce steam to supply the British Celanese plant after passing through the back-pressure steam turbines. The station had two single-flue concrete chimneys of 96 m (315 ft) in height, one being demolished in the early 1990s the other in the early 2000s. The station also had four concrete cooling towers of 45 m (150 ft) in height located 0.25 miles to the east, these were in practice rarely used. They were demolished in 1984. The electricity output of the station was as follows.

Derwent power station

Derwent power station was originally built for Courtaulds Chemicals and was opened on 1 June 1995 by

Tim Eggar Timothy John Crommelin Eggar (born 19 December 1951) is a British businessman and former politician. He holds positions on the boards of multiple organisations including Shiplake College and Cape plc, and was the Conservative MP for Enfield ...

, the Energy Secretary. It was owned 17.5% by Courtaulds, 33% by Mission Energy Company (UK) Ltd, and 49.5% by Southern Electric Power Generation (now owned by

Scottish and Southern Energy SSE plc (formerly Scottish and Southern Energy plc) is a multinational energy company headquartered in Perth, Scotland. It is listed on the London Stock Exchange, and is a constituent of the FTSE 100 Index. SSE operates in the United Kingdom a ...

). The nearby works are now owned by Accordis. The 33% stake of Mission Energy was sold to

International Power Engie Energy International, formerly International Power, is a multinational electricity generation company headquartered in Newcastle upon Tyne, and a wholly owned subsidiary of the French company Engie (formerly GDF Suez). The company was for ...

. The other stakes are now owned by

Mitsui is a Japanese corporate group and '' keiretsu'' that traces its roots to the ''zaibatsu'' groups that were dissolved after World War II. Unlike the ''zaibatsu'' of the pre-war period, there is no controlling company with regulatory power. Ins ...

. Near to the plant is Celanese Acetates Ltd, which used to be

, which does not have any ownership of the power station. The textiles site was built in 1916 to provide waterproofing for aircraft wings, known as British Cellulose & Chemical Manufacturing and made

cellulose acetate In biochemistry, cellulose acetate refers to any acetate ester of cellulose, usually cellulose diacetate. It was first prepared in 1865. A bioplastic, cellulose acetate is used as a film base in photography, as a component in some coatings, and ...

and

Acetic anhydride Acetic anhydride, or ethanoic anhydride, is the chemical compound with the chemical formula, formula . Commonly abbreviated , it is one the simplest organic acid anhydride, anhydrides of a carboxylic acid and is widely used in the production of c ...

. This came from techniques invented by the Swiss chemist,

Henri Dreyfus Henri Dreyfus (or Henry Dreyfus, 7 January 1882 – 30 December 1944) was a Switzerland, Swiss Invention, inventor of the modern Loom, weaving loom. He and his brother Camille Dreyfus (chemist), Camille Dreyfus also invented Celanese, an acetate y ...

. British Celanese and Courtaulds merged in 1957. Courtaulds was bought by

Sara Lee Sara may refer to: People * Sara (given name), a feminine given name People with the given name * Sara Aboobacker (1936–2023), Indian writer and translator * Sara Ahmed (born 1969), British-Australian writer * Sara Allgood (1880–1950), Ir ...

in 2000 following a

hostile takeover In business, a takeover is the purchase of one company (law), company (the ''target'') by another (the ''acquirer'' or ''bidder''). In the UK, the term refers to the acquisition of a public company whose shares are publicly listed, in contrast t ...

. The station later traded as Derwent Cogeneration Ltd.

Specification

Derwent was a

combined cycle 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 that ran on

natural gas Natural gas (also fossil gas, methane gas, and gas) is a naturally occurring compound of gaseous hydrocarbons, primarily methane (95%), small amounts of higher alkanes, and traces of carbon dioxide and nitrogen, hydrogen sulfide and helium ...

. Most of the power was generated for Celanese Acetate site next to the power station. Only around 50MWe is put into the National Grid; and the heat produces steam for the textile plant. This produced electricity for around 180,000 homes; enough for Derby and beyond. It has four

General Electric General Electric Company (GE) was an American Multinational corporation, multinational Conglomerate (company), conglomerate founded in 1892, incorporated in the New York (state), state of New York and headquartered in Boston. Over the year ...

Frame 6 MS6001B

gas turbine A gas turbine or gas turbine engine is a type of Internal combustion engine#Continuous combustion, continuous flow internal combustion engine. The main parts common to all gas turbine engines form the power-producing part (known as the gas gene ...

and a 59MWe

steam turbine A steam turbine or steam turbine engine is a machine or heat engine that extracts thermal energy from pressurized steam and uses it to do mechanical work utilising a rotating output shaft. Its modern manifestation was invented by Sir Charles Par ...

and

surface condenser A surface condenser is a water-cooled shell and tube heat exchanger installed to condense exhaust steam from a steam turbine in thermal power stations. These Condenser (heat transfer), condensers are heat exchangers which convert steam from its g ...

. It is a

combined heat and power Cogeneration or combined heat and power (CHP) is the use of a heat engine or power station to electricity generation, generate electricity and useful heat at the same time. Cogeneration is a more efficient use of fuel or heat, because otherwise ...

(CHP) plant.

Closure

In 2012, it was announced that the Combined Heat and Power plant (CHP) was to stop supplying steam to the adjacent

textile Textile is an Hyponymy and hypernymy, umbrella term that includes various Fiber, fiber-based materials, including fibers, yarns, Staple (textiles)#Filament fiber, filaments, Thread (yarn), threads, and different types of #Fabric, fabric. ...

plant due to it closing. The gas station also closed later that year with a loss of around 30 jobs. Since 2012, the station has been retained for future use. In 2018, Peel Environmental purchased the mothballed station in the hope of recommencing power generation at the site. However, these plans did not go ahead, and the station is due to be demolished in 2021 as it is "no longer commercially viable".

References

External links

International Power

The history of the locomotive; Spondon No. 1

{{East Midlands powerstations Energy infrastructure completed in 1995 Buildings and structures in Derby Natural gas-fired power stations in England Power stations in the East Midlands Cogeneration power stations in England