Peterborough Power Station
Encyclopedia
Fengate, Peterborough
Fengate is a predominantly industrial area of the city of Peterborough, Cambridgeshire in the United Kingdom. For electoral purposes it forms part of Peterborough East ward. The industrial estate is known as Eastern Industry. Peterborough Power Station is located here.Flag Fen, the Bronze Age...
in the city of Peterborough
Peterborough
Peterborough is a cathedral city and unitary authority area in the East of England, with an estimated population of in June 2007. For ceremonial purposes it is in the county of Cambridgeshire. Situated north of London, the city stands on the River Nene which flows into the North Sea...
, Cambridgeshire
Cambridgeshire
Cambridgeshire is a county in England, bordering Lincolnshire to the north, Norfolk to the northeast, Suffolk to the east, Essex and Hertfordshire to the south, and Bedfordshire and Northamptonshire to the west...
in the United Kingdom
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
. It employs around forty people.
The power station was commissioned in December 1993 with construction starting in January 1991. It is run by Centrica
Centrica
Centrica plc is a multinational utility company, based in the United Kingdom but also with interests in North America. Centrica is the largest supplier of gas to domestic customers in the UK, and one of the largest suppliers of electricity, operating under the trading names "Scottish Gas" in...
Energy and officially owned by Centrica PB Ltd. Peterborough Power Ltd, the station's original operating name, was bought by Centrica Plc from Dallas
Dallas, Texas
Dallas is the third-largest city in Texas and the ninth-largest in the United States. The Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex is the largest metropolitan area in the South and fourth-largest metropolitan area in the United States...
-based TXU Corp. in October 2001. Centrica was created in 1997 when British Gas Plc
British Gas plc
British Gas plc was formerly the monopoly gas supplier and is a private sector in the United Kingdom.- History :In the early 1900s the gas market in the United Kingdom was mainly run by county councils and small private firms...
demerged into Centrica Plc and BG Group
BG Group
BG Group plc is a global oil and gas company headquartered in Reading, United Kingdom. It has operations in 25 countries across Africa, Asia, Australasia, Europe, North America and South America and produces around 680,000 barrels of oil equivalent per day. It has a major Liquefied Natural Gas ...
Plc; it owns the rights to the British Gas name for use in the domestic market.
Technical specifications
Peterborough is a CCGTCombined cycle
In electric power generation a combined cycle is an assembly of heat engines that work in tandem off the same source of heat, converting it into mechanical energy, which in turn usually drives electrical generators...
type power station that runs on natural gas. The two General Electric
General Electric
General Electric Company , or GE, is an American multinational conglomerate corporation incorporated in Schenectady, New York and headquartered in Fairfield, Connecticut, United States...
Frame 9E gas turbine
Gas turbine
A gas turbine, also called a combustion turbine, is a type of internal combustion engine. It has an upstream rotating compressor coupled to a downstream turbine, and a combustion chamber in-between....
s, each producing 118MWe which connect to a heat recovery steam generator powered by exhaust gases at 986 degrees fahrenheit (530 °C) which leads to one steam turbine
Steam turbine
A steam turbine is a mechanical device that extracts thermal energy from pressurized steam, and converts it into rotary motion. Its modern manifestation was invented by Sir Charles Parsons in 1884....
running at 3,000 rpm
Revolutions per minute
Revolutions per minute is a measure of the frequency of a rotation. It annotates the number of full rotations completed in one minute around a fixed axis...
. The generators on the gas turbines have a terminal voltage of 14kV and are rated at 161MVA
Volt-ampere
A volt-ampere is the unit used for the apparent power in an electrical circuit, equal to the product of root-mean-square voltage and RMS current. In direct current circuits, this product is equal to the real power in watts...
.
The installation produces enough power for two cities the size of Peterborough. Including the steam turbine, it has a thermal efficiency
Thermal efficiency
In thermodynamics, the thermal efficiency is a dimensionless performance measure of a device that uses thermal energy, such as an internal combustion engine, a boiler, a furnace, or a refrigerator for example.-Overview:...
of 48% with a total thermal input of 790MW. The plant has a black start
Black start
A black start is the process of restoring a power station to operation without relying on the external electric power transmission network.Normally, the electric power used within the plant is provided from the station's own generators...
2.9MW diesel generator
Diesel generator
A diesel generator is the combination of a diesel engine with an electrical generator to generate electrical energy....
and connects to the National Grid at 132kV. It is used for base load
Base load power plant
Baseload is the minimum amount of power that a utility or distribution company must make available to its customers, or the amount of power required to meet minimum demands based on reasonable expectations of customer requirements...
and peak load
Peaking power plant
Peaking power plants, also known as peaker plants, and occasionally just "peakers," are power plants that generally run only when there is a high demand, known as peak demand, for electricity.-Peak hours:...
, 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 WaterAnglian Water
Anglian Water is a privatised water company that operates in the East of England. Named for East Anglia, apart from Norfolk, Suffolk and Cambridgeshire it also covers Lincolnshire, Essex, Bedfordshire, Buckinghamshire, Northamptonshire, a small part of north Nottinghamshire and Greater London...
’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.