Rocksavage Power Station is an 800 MWe gas-fired power station in

Runcorn Runcorn is an industrial town and Runcorn Docks, cargo port in the Borough of Halton, Cheshire, England. Runcorn is on the south bank of the River Mersey, where the estuary narrows to form the Runcorn Gap. It is upstream from the port of Live ...

, off the A557, at the junction of the

River Weaver The River Weaver is a river, navigable in its lower reaches, running in a curving route anti-clockwise across west Cheshire, northern England. Improvements to the river to make it navigable were authorised in 1721 and the work, which included ...

and

River Mersey The River Mersey () is a major river in North West England. Its name derives from Old English and means "boundary river", possibly referring to its having been a border between the ancient kingdoms of Mercia and Northumbria. For centuries it h ...

, and near junction 12 of the M56.

History

It was opened by Queen Elizabeth II and the Duke of Edinburgh on 31 July 1998, meeting Carlos Riva.''Chester Chronicle'' Friday 7 August 1998, page 3It was owned by InterGen, a company that is now owned by Sev.en Global Investments. It cost £375m. The EPC contractor was

Bechtel Bechtel Corporation () is an American engineering, procurement, construction, and project management company founded in San Francisco, California in 1898, and headquartered in Reston, Virginia in the Washington metropolitan area. , the '' E ...

. The site trades as Rocksavage Power Company Ltd. It sponsors the Runcorn Jets baseball club, th
Highfield Male Voice Choir
and th
Weston Angling Club
The site has

for schoolchildren. The name comes from the nearby ruined Elizabethan mansion,

Rocksavage Rocksavage or Rock Savage was an Elizabethan mansion in Cheshire, England, which served as the primary seat of the Savage family. The house lies in ruins, at in Clifton (now a district of Runcorn). Built in the 1560s for Sir John Savage, Rock ...

Specification

It is a CCGT-type powe
station
that uses

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 ...

. It has two

Alstom Alstom SA () is a French multinational rolling stock manufacturer which operates worldwide in rail transport markets. It is active in the fields of passenger transportation, signaling, and locomotives, producing high-speed, suburban, regional ...

260MW
GT26A
gas turbines, with an Alstom

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 ...

each that produces steam for one

ABB ABB Group is a Swedish-Swiss multinational electrical engineering corporation. Incorporated in Switzerland as ABB Ltd., and headquartered in Zurich, it is dual-listed on the Nasdaq Nordic exchange in Stockholm, Sweden, and the SIX Swiss Excha ...

280MWe

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 ...

. The plant runs at 58%

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 ...

. 300MWe is used by the

Ineos Ineos Group Limited is a British multinational conglomerate headquartered and registered in London. it was the fourth largest chemical company in the world, with additional operations in fuel, packaging and food, construction, automotive, ph ...

site (previously ICI) at Weston Point that makes hydrofluororcarbons (HFCs), and the other 400MWe is sold 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 ...

(formerly Scottish Hydro) for electricity supply.

References

External links

Intergen
*
ABB wins order for gas turbines
{{North West Power Stations Natural gas-fired power stations in England Power stations in North West England Buildings and structures in Runcorn