Keadby Power Stations are a pair of natural gas-fired power stations near

Scunthorpe Scunthorpe () is an industrial town in Lincolnshire, England, and the county's third most populous settlement after Lincoln, England, Lincoln and Grimsby, with a population of 81,286 in 2021. It is the administrative centre and largest settleme ...

North Lincolnshire North Lincolnshire is a Unitary authorities of England, unitary authority area with Borough status in the United Kingdom, borough status in Lincolnshire, England. At the 2011 United Kingdom census, 2011 Census, it had a population of 167,446. T ...

, built on the site of an older coal power station. The site lies near the B1392 and the

River Trent The Trent is the third Longest rivers of the United Kingdom, longest river in the United Kingdom. Its Source (river or stream), source is in Staffordshire, on the southern edge of Biddulph Moor. It flows through and drains the North Midlands ...

, and the Scunthorpe-

Grimsby Grimsby or Great Grimsby is a port town in Lincolnshire, England with a population of 86,138 (as of 2021). It is located near the mouth on the south bank of the Humber that flows to the North Sea. Grimsby adjoins the town of Cleethorpes dir ...

railway Rail transport (also known as train transport) is a means of transport using wheeled vehicles running in railway track, tracks, which usually consist of two parallel steel railway track, rails. Rail transport is one of the two primary means of ...

. Also nearby is the

Stainforth and Keadby Canal The Stainforth and Keadby Canal is a navigable canal in South Yorkshire and Lincolnshire, England. It connects the River Don Navigation at Bramwith to the River Trent at Keadby, by way of Stainforth, South Yorkshire, Stainforth, Thorne, Sout ...

, which is part of the

Sheffield and South Yorkshire Navigation The Sheffield and South Yorkshire Navigation (S&SY) is a system of navigable inland waterways ( canals and canalised rivers) in South Yorkshire and Lincolnshire, England. Chiefly based on the River Don, it runs for a length of and has 27 lo ...

. The current stations are operated by

SSE Thermal SSE Thermal is the Power Generation, thermal power generation subsidiary of British company SSE plc. Overview SSE Thermal operates several thermal power stations across the United Kingdom and Ireland that provide electricity to the National ...

. SSE also owns a 68 MWe capacity wind farm, Keadby Wind Farm, nearby. This was England's largest onshore wind farm, and started operating in July 2014.

Keadby Gas Power Station

Keadby Gas Power Station was commissioned on 22 January 1996, and was opened by

Scottish Hydro Electric Scottish Hydro-Electric (named North of Scotland Electricity between 1 April 1989 and 1 August 1989) was a public electricity supplier in the United Kingdom. It was listed on the London Stock Exchange and was once a constituent of the FTSE 100 ...

and

NORWEB Norweb, originally the North Western Electricity Board, was a British electricity supply and distribution company. It supplied electricity to about 4.7 million industrial, commercial and domestic customers in the North West of England, although ...

when the site was in South Humberside. Scottish Hydro bought the 50% share of Keadby Generation Ltd, then owned by United Utilities, in March 1997 for £253 million. It is 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 ...

. In March 2013 the power station was 'deep mothballed' in response to adverse market conditions; it reopened in December 2015 after winning a stand-by contract to provide 734 MWe of capacity. It is a CCGT type power station running on natural gas. There are two

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 9FA

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 ...

s each rated at 250 MWe. The total thermal input is 1329 MW. Each gas turbine is connected to a

heat recovery steam generator A heat recovery steam generator (HRSG) is a 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 used to drive a steam ...

which connect to one

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 ...

which has an output of 260 MWe. Steam is condensed using water from the River Trent. There is a 25 MWe 11 kV gas turbine available for

black start A black start is the process of restoring an electric power station, a part of an electric grid or an industrial plant, to operation without relying on the external transmission network, electric power transmission network to recover from a tota ...

s when there is no power to start producing electricity. The station connects to the National Grid at 400 kV, being used for

baseload 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 or dispatchable generation, depending on which approach has the best mi ...

Keadby 2

In 1999, Scottish Hydro applied to add another 710 MWe of capacity at Keadby, and a variation to this consent was granted in November 2016. The project, called 'Keadby 2', was announced in May 2018. It uses a single

Siemens Energy Siemens Energy AG is a German publicly-traded energy corporation formed through the spin-off of the former Gas and Power division of Siemens, and it includes full ownership of Siemens Gamesa. Christian Bruch is the CEO, and the former CEO of S ...

SGT5-9000HL turbine. Construction on the plant, now rated at 893 MWe, began in August 2018. The station was planned to come online in October 2022, but this date was missed, with the plant coming online in February 2023. , Keadby 2 at 849 MW is the biggest single-turbine combined cycle powerplant in the world, and the most efficient at 64%.

Keadby Three

In December 2022, development consent was obtained for a third plant on the Keadby site. Keadby Three is planned to be a 910 MWe plant with

carbon capture and storage Carbon capture and storage (CCS) is a process by which carbon dioxide (CO2) from industrial installations is separated before it is released into the atmosphere, then transported to a long-term storage location.IPCC, 2021Annex VII: Glossary at ...

, with opening planned as soon as 2027.

Keadby coal-fired station

The first power station on the site was authorised in 1947 and work on the foundations began in July 1948. It was designed to have a total capacity of 360 MW. The plant comprised six Stirling radiant type, pulverised fuel, twin furnace boilers. Each boiler had an evaporation capacity of 550,000 lb/hr (69.3 kg/s) of steam, the total evaporative capacity of the completed station was 3,300,000 lb/hr (415.8 kg/s). Steam conditions were 925 psi and 915 °F (63.8 bar and 490.6 °C). There were six Parsons 60 MW hydrogen cooled turbo-alternators, generating at 11 kV. The first set was commissioned in April 1952, followed by the other sets in November 1952, June 1953, June 1954, December 1954 and December 1955. In 1952 the boiler associated with the first set was the largest yet commissioned in the UK. It was officially opened in April 1956, and cost £16m. The generating capacity and electricity output from Keadby power station is given in the following table.CEGB ''Annual report and Accounts'', 1961, 1962 & 1963 The coal-fired station closed in 1984.

References

External links