Little Barford Power Station is a 680MWe gas-fired power station just north of the village of
Little BarfordLittle Barford is a village and civil parish located in Bedfordshire, England. It lies on the county boundary with Cambridgeshire, adjacent to the town of St Neots...
(close to
St NeotsSt Neots is a town with a population of over 27,000 people on the River Great Ouse. It is the largest town in Cambridgeshire, England,...
) in
BedfordshireBedfordshire is a ceremonial county of historic origin in England that forms part of the East of England region....
. It lies just south of the
A428The A428 road is a major road in central and eastern England. It connects the cities of Coventry and Cambridge by way of the county towns of Northampton and Bedford.-Coventry - Northampton:...
St Neots bypass and east of the
WybostonWyboston is a village in the English county of Bedfordshire.The eastern part of the village is dominated by the A1 Great North Road which at this point also carries the traffic of the A428 east–west road. The northern junction of these roads is grade-separated, while the southern junction is a...
Leisure Park. The
River Great OuseThe River Great Ouse is a river in the east of England. It is long which makes it the major navigable river in East Anglia, and the fourth-longest river in the United Kingdom. The name Ouse is from the Celtic or pre-Celtic *Udso-s, and probably means simply "water"...
runs alongside.
It is built on the site of a former
coal-fired power stationA fossil-fuel power plant is a power plant that burns fossil fuels such as coal, natural gas or petroleum to produce electricity.Fossil-fuel power plants are designed on a large scale for continuous operation...
. This station had a generating capacity of 120 MW and was closed on 26 October 1981.
Construction of the gas fired station started in 1994, and it opened in 1996.
Little Barford Power Station is a 680MWe gas-fired power station just north of the village of
Little BarfordLittle Barford is a village and civil parish located in Bedfordshire, England. It lies on the county boundary with Cambridgeshire, adjacent to the town of St Neots...
(close to
St NeotsSt Neots is a town with a population of over 27,000 people on the River Great Ouse. It is the largest town in Cambridgeshire, England,...
) in
BedfordshireBedfordshire is a ceremonial county of historic origin in England that forms part of the East of England region....
. It lies just south of the
A428The A428 road is a major road in central and eastern England. It connects the cities of Coventry and Cambridge by way of the county towns of Northampton and Bedford.-Coventry - Northampton:...
St Neots bypass and east of the
WybostonWyboston is a village in the English county of Bedfordshire.The eastern part of the village is dominated by the A1 Great North Road which at this point also carries the traffic of the A428 east–west road. The northern junction of these roads is grade-separated, while the southern junction is a...
Leisure Park. The
River Great OuseThe River Great Ouse is a river in the east of England. It is long which makes it the major navigable river in East Anglia, and the fourth-longest river in the United Kingdom. The name Ouse is from the Celtic or pre-Celtic *Udso-s, and probably means simply "water"...
runs alongside.
History
It is built on the site of a former
coal-fired power stationA fossil-fuel power plant is a power plant that burns fossil fuels such as coal, natural gas or petroleum to produce electricity.Fossil-fuel power plants are designed on a large scale for continuous operation...
. This station had a generating capacity of 120 MW and was closed on 26 October 1981.
Construction of the gas fired station started in 1994, and it opened in 1996. The company that built it,
SwindonSwindon is a large town and unitary borough authority in the ceremonial county of Wiltshire in south west England. It is midway between Bristol, west, and Reading, east. London is east....
-based
National Power{Infobox Defunct Company| company_name = National Power Plc| company_logo =| company_type = Public| fate = demerged into Innogy and International Power| foundation = 1990| successor = Innogy
International Power| defunct = 2001...
, became Innogy in August 2000. That company was bought by the German electricity company,
EssenEssen is a city in the central part of the Ruhr Area in North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany. Located on the Ruhr River, its population of approximately 579,000 makes it either the 7th- or 8th-largest-city in Germany...
-based
RWERWE AG , is a German electric power and natural gas public utility company based in Essen. Through its various subsidiaries, the energy company contributes electricity and gas to more than 20 million electricity customers and 10 million gas customers, principally in Europe...
in March 2002, now under the trading name
npowerNpower is a UK based electricity and natural gas supply company, formerly known as Innogy plc. As Innogy plc it was listed on the London Stock Exchange and was a constituent of the FTSE 100 Index but it is now owned by RWE of Germany.- History :The Company was established as Innogy plc from the UK...
(a former brand name of National Power).
In 2002, an electrical storage facility was built by Regenesys Technologies Ltd (previously owned by Innogy but bought by
VRB Power Systems in October 2004) which uses
fuel cellA fuel cell is an electrochemical cell that produces electricity from a replenishable fuel tank. The electricity is generated through the reaction, triggered in the presence of an electrolyte, between the fuel and an oxidant . The reactants flow into the cell, and the reaction products flow out of...
s. The fuel cell plant is still owned by RWE.
Specification
It is a
CCGTA combined cycle is characteristic of a power producing engine or plant that employs more than one thermodynamic cycle. Heat engines are only able to use a portion of the energy their fuel generates . The remaining heat from combustion is generally wasted...
type power station using natural gas. It has two
General ElectricThe General Electric Company, or GE , is a multinational American technology and services conglomerate incorporated in the State of New York. In 2009, Forbes ranked GE as the world's largest company...
Frame 9 (9001)
gas turbineA gas turbine, also called a combustion turbine, is a rotary engine that extracts energy from a flow of combustion gas. It has an upstream compressor coupled to a downstream turbine, and a combustion chamber in-between. Energy is added to the gas stream in the combustor, where air is mixed with...
engines built by GEC Alsthom (
AlstomAlstom is a large French multinational conglomerate which holds interests in the power generation and transport markets. According to the company website, in the years 2007-'08 Alstom had annual sales of over €16.9 billion, and employed more than 81,500 people in 70 countries. Alstom's...
). Each of these has a
Babcock EnergyDoosan Babcock Energy Limited, commonly known as Doosan Babcock, is a British based power sector utility boiler OEM and after market services company, offering specialist services and technologies to clients in the nuclear power generation, fossil-fired power generation, oil & gas and petrochemical...
heat recovery steam generator which lead to one
steam turbineA 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....
. The station connects to the National Grid at the nearby 400 kV Eaton Socon
substationAn electrical substation is a subsidiary station of an electricity generation, transmission and distribution system where voltage is transformed from high to low or the reverse using transformers...
. It employs around fifty people. It has a
black startA black start is the process of restoring a power station to operation without relying on external energy sources.Normally, the electric power used within the plant is provided from the station's own generators. If all of the plant’s main generators are shut down, station service power is provided...
facility using a 17MWe gas turbine engine. The site was built by EGT,
Atlantic Projects and
Henry Boot.
External links