Hastings Power Station was a 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....

 power station

Power station

A power station is an industrial facility for the generation of electric energy....

 situated in Hastings

Hastings

Hastings is a town and borough in the county of East Sussex on the south coast of England. The town is located east of the county town of Lewes and south east of London, and has an estimated population of 86,900....

 in East Sussex

East Sussex

East Sussex is a county in South East England. It is bordered by the counties of Kent, Surrey and West Sussex, and to the south by the English Channel.-History:...

, South East England

South East England

South East England is one of the nine official regions of England, designated in 1994 and adopted for statistical purposes in 1999. It consists of Berkshire, Buckinghamshire, East Sussex, Hampshire, Isle of Wight, Kent, Oxfordshire, Surrey and West Sussex...

. Completed in 1966, the station had two 55-megawatt (MW) gas turbine generating sets. The first of the two sets was commissioned in January 1966, and the second in March of the same year.

Infrastructure

Building
The station consisted of a steel framed building clad with a 14 inches (355.6 mm) brick wall without windows. The access doors were doubled to reduce noise emission and the compressor intakes were at either end of the station at roof level. Silencing was provided at the air intake and by attenuators fitted between the exhaust gas ducting and the base of the two chimney stacks.

Chimneys
Exhaust gases entered the exhaust casing at 450 degrees Celsius (840 °F) and left the 200 ft high chimneys at 300 degrees Celsius (570 °F). The chimneys were concrete, lined with heat and acid resistant bricks and a stainless steel 'cap'. About 1.4 million cubic feet per minute (670 m³/s) of gas containing 19% oxygen was exhausted from each chimney at a velocity of about 135 ft/s (41.1 m/s; 92 mph).

Cooling water
Cooling water for the station auxiliaries and alternator was drawn from a 1000000 gallons (4,546.1 m³) pond, through a small independent mechanical draught tower.

Emergency generator
An emergency diesel generator exciter set was housed is a separate building. In the event of a system flux, the generator was capable of energising sufficient auxiliaries to start up and put on full load both main turbines consecutively.

Fuel oil
The gas turbine fuel oil supplies were held in five vertical main oil storage tanks, total capacity 4,440 tones, i.e., little more than 130 hours continuous generating at full load. Fuel was delivered by rail to the station's own siding located off the Hastings to Ashford Railway line, a few hundred metres north east of Ore Railway Station.

Power plant

Gas generators
Rolls-Royce

Rolls-Royce plc

Rolls-Royce Group plc is a global power systems company headquartered in the City of Westminster, London, United Kingdom. It is the world’s second-largest maker of aircraft engines , and also has major businesses in the marine propulsion and energy sectors. Through its defence-related activities...

 gas generators were used. With little modification, they had been adapted to burn diesel oil with a high degree of reliability. They were developed from the well-tried aircraft engine used in the Comet

De Havilland Comet

The de Havilland DH 106 Comet was the world's first commercial jet airliner to reach production. Developed and manufactured by de Havilland at the Hatfield, Hertfordshire, United Kingdom headquarters, it first flew in 1949 and was a landmark in aeronautical design...

 and Caravelle

Sud Aviation Caravelle

The Sud Aviation SE 210 Caravelle was the first short/medium-range jet airliner produced by the French Sud Aviation firm starting in 1955 . The Caravelle was one of the more successful European first generation jetliners, selling throughout Europe and even penetrating the United States market, with...

 aircraft

Aircraft

An aircraft is a vehicle that is able to fly by gaining support from the air, or, in general, the atmosphere of a planet. An aircraft counters the force of gravity by using either static lift or by using the dynamic lift of an airfoil, or in a few cases the downward thrust from jet engines.Although...

. It had a single shaft engine with a 17 stage axial flow compressor and canular combustion chamber before reaching the three stage turbine.

Turbine
There were two 55 MW AP4 Rolls-Royce/AEI sets. Four gas generators in 'box' formation powered a two stage turbine having discs of 2.5% nickel chrome and a stator of Nimonic

Nimonic

Nimonic is a registered trademark of Special Metals Corporation that refers to a family of nickel-based superalloys. Nimonic alloys typically consist of more than 50% nickel and 20% chromium with additives such as titanium and aluminium. The main use is in gas turbine components and extremely high...

80A. The turbine blades were also forged from Nimonic 80A and were at the time, the largest Nimonic forging ever made.

Alternator
The alternator was designed to operate at 3,000 rpm and was coupled to the turbine via a clutch. The main and pilot exciters were gear driven from the end of the alternator shaft at 1,000 rpm.

Automatic control

The station could theoretically be controlled from a remote location. The main turbines and auxiliaries were controlled with manual over-riding features. The main turbine sets could achieve a load of 10 MW from the pressing of a button within 2 minutes and 40 seconds. From the stabilising load of 10 MW, the fill capacity of 55 MW could be achieved in a matter of seconds.

This fast start-up of a power-station was particularly useful for supplying the national electricity gid at very short notice where sharp drops in supply occurred.

Decline and closure

The station was built before the OPEC crisis of the mid-1970s. As oil based fuels increased in price, the station was deemed uneconomic and was mothballed in 1979. It received a reprieve when turbine number 1 was recommissioned in 1983 to compensate for a national deficit of power-generators caused by the closure of some coal fired stations during the coal miners strike. By the late 1980s, the turbines and other plant were either stripped from the station or stolen by scrap-dealers. In the year 2000, an arson attack on illegally dumped rubber tyres within the building caused considerable damage. The station was demolished in 2003.