Peterborough Power Station is a 360MW gas-fired power station at Eastern Industry, Fengate in the city of

Peterborough Peterborough ( ) is a City status in the United Kingdom, cathedral city in the City of Peterborough district in the Ceremonial counties of England, ceremonial county of Cambridgeshire, England. The city is north of London, on the River Nene. A ...

Cambridgeshire Cambridgeshire (abbreviated Cambs.) is a Ceremonial counties of England, ceremonial county in the East of England and East Anglia. It is bordered by Lincolnshire to the north, Norfolk to the north-east, Suffolk to the east, Essex and Hertfor ...

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 Northwestern Europe, off the coast of European mainland, the continental mainland. It comprises England, Scotlan ...

. 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, England. It is the largest supplier of gas to domestic customers in the United Kingdom, and one of the largest suppliers ...

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 a city in the U.S. state of Texas and the most populous city in the Dallas–Fort Worth metroplex, the List of Texas metropolitan areas, most populous metropolitan area in Texas and the Metropolitan statistical area, fourth-most ...

-based TXU Corp. in October 2001. Centrica was created in 1997 when

British Gas Plc British Gas (trading as Scottish Gas in Scotland) is an energy and home services provider in the United Kingdom. It is the trading name of British Gas Services Limited and British Gas New Heating Limited, both subsidiaries of Centrica. Serving ...

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 an ...

Plc; it owns the rights to the British Gas name for use in the domestic market. A previous

coal-fired power station A coal-fired power station or coal power plant is a thermal power station which burns coal to generate electricity. Worldwide there are about 2,500 coal-fired power stations, on average capable of generating a gigawatt each. They generate ...

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) 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 9E

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 producing 118MWe which connect to a heat recovery steam generator powered by exhaust gases at 530 °C (986 °F) which leads 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 ...

running at 3,000

rpm Revolutions per minute (abbreviated rpm, RPM, rev/min, r/min, or r⋅min−1) is a unit of rotational speed (or rotational frequency) for rotating machines. One revolution per minute is equivalent to hertz. Standards ISO 80000-3:2019 def ...

. 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 ...

of 48% with a total thermal input of 790MW. The plant has a black start 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 an engine generator. A diesel compress ...

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

and

peak load Peak demand on an electrical grid is the highest electrical power demand that has occurred over a specified time period (Gönen 2008). Peak demand is typically characterized as annual, daily or seasonal and has the unit of power. Peak demand, pe ...

, 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 supply provided by

Anglian Water Anglian Water Services Limited is a water company that operates in the East of England. It was formed in 1989 under the partial privatisation of the water industry. It provides water supply, sewerage and sewage treatment to the area formerly ...

’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 contrasts with priv ...

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 ) flows through the counties of Northamptonshire, Cambridgeshire, Lincolnshire, and Norfolk in Eastern England from its sources in Arbury Hill in Northamptonshire. Flowing Northeast through East England to its mouth at Lutt ...

. 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 in honor o ...

(MW) from two

English Electric The English Electric Company Limited (EE) was a British industrial manufacturer formed after World War I by amalgamating five businesses which, during the war, made munitions, armaments and aeroplanes. It initially specialised in industrial el ...

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 or ψ), the twenty-third letter of the Greek alphabet * Psi (Cyrillic), letter of the early Cyrillic alphabet, adopted from Greek Arts and entertainment * "Psi" as an abbreviat ...

(27.6 bar) 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, also called ferroconcrete or ferro-concrete, is a composite material in which concrete's relatively low tensile strength and ductility are compensated for by the inclusion of reinforcement having higher tensile strength or ...

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

. 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