Great Yarmouth Power Station is combined cycle gas turbine power station on South Denes Road in Great Yarmouth in Norfolk, England, with a maximum output of 420MW electricity, opened in 2001. It is built on the site of an oil-fired power station, built in 1958 and closed and demolished in the 1990s. A coal-fired power station was built in Great Yarmouth in 1894 and operated until 1961. The station is operated by RWE Generation UK.
Great Yarmouth's first power station which used coal was built in 1894 and demolished in 1961 together with its iconic large chimney.
In 1923, the AC plant comprised three 75kW, three 150kW and two 300kW reciprocating engines and generators, and 1 à600kW and 2 à1,500kW turbo-alternators. The DC plant comprised two 200kW and one 400kW reciprocating engines and generators. The total generating capacity of the station was 4,175kW. The total output of the boiler plant was 58,000lb/hr (7.31kg/s) of steam. Electricity was available as single phase AC, 83.5Hz at 200 and 100 V and DC at 500 V. In 1923 the station generated 3.776GWh of electricity, some of this was used in the plant, the total amount sold was 5.559GWh. The revenue from sales of current was ã48,038, this gave a surplus of revenue over expenses of ã20,776. In 1926, a 3,000kW Brush-Ljungstrém turbo alternator set was installed and all the smaller plant was removed except the two 1,500 kWmachines, which were uprated to 2,000kW. By 1959, the plant comprised one Babcock & Wilcox 108,000 pounds per hour boiler delivering steam at and to one 7.5MW and one 3.75MW Brush-Ljunstrom turbo-alternators. Condenser water was drawn from the River Yare. The electricity output in the final years was:
Before demolition a second much larger plant, built on the South Denes, had opened in September 1958.
South Denes power station was sanctioned in July 1953 as a coal fired station but in 1955 it was decided to convert to oil firing using residual oil.Initially commissioned in 1957. it had an installed capacity of 252MW and comprised two 60MW Metropolitan Vickers turbo-alternator and two 60MW Richardsons Westgarth turbo-alternators. In 1972, the 60MW machine was up-rated to 64MW. The completed station accommodated two three drum boilers by International Combustion, Ltd., and two two-drum boilers by Mitchell Engineering, Ltd. Each has a maximum continuous evaporative capacity of 550,000 lb/hr. (69.3kg/s) at a pressure of and . Seawater was used for cooling. In 1961, the thermal efficiency of the station was 30.44 per cent. The output in GWh over the period 19611982 was as follows.<graph>{ "version": 2, "width": 800, "height": 250, "data": [ { "name": "table", "values": [ { "x": 1961, "y": 1546 }, { "x": 1964, "y": 999 }, { "x": 1965, "y": 1503 }, { "x": 1966, "y": 1366 }, { "x": 1967, "y": 1242 }, { "x": 1968, "y": 1227 }, { "x": 1969, "y": 1087 }, { "x": 1970, "y": 1544 }, { "x": 1971, "y": 1679 }, { "x": 1972, "y": 1331 }, { "x": 1973, "y": 1093 }, { "x": 1974, "y": 1040 }, { "x": 1975, "y": 948 }, { "x": 1976, "y": 617 }, { "x": 1977, "y": 417 }, { "x": 1978, "y": 604 }, { "x": 1979, "y": 518 }, { "x": 1980, "y": 239 }, { "x": 1981, "y": 107 }, { "x": 1982, "y": 130 }, { "x": 1983, "y": 112 }, { "x": 1984, "y": 124 }, { "x": 1985, "y": 1399 }, { "x": 1986, "y": 0 }, { "x": 1960, "y": 1018 }, { "x": 1961, "y": 1617 }, { "x": 1962, "y": 1506 }, { "x": 1963, "y": 1558 } ] } ], "scales": [ { "name": "x", "type": "ordinal", "range": "width", "zero": false, "domain": { "data": "table", "field": "x" } }, { "name": "y", "type": "linear", "range": "height", "nice": true, "domain": { "data": "table", "field": "y" } } ], "axes": [ { "type": "x", "scale": "x" }, { "type": "y", "scale": "y" } ], "marks": [ { "type": "rect", "from": { "data": "table" }, "properties": { "enter": { "x": { "scale": "x", "field": "x" }, "y": { "scale": "y", "field": "y" }, "y2": { "scale": "y", "value": 0 }, "fill": { "value": "steelblue" }, "width": { "scale": "x", "band": "true", "offset": -1 } } } } ] }</graph> This plant produced power until it was first scheduled to close in 1984 before briefly being used again during the UK miners' strike (1984âÂÂ1985) (see graph) after which it again remained unused until 1994 when demolition began. On 5 May 1997, the main building and its chimney were demolished via a controlled explosion watched by thousands of people from the roads on the other side of the River Yare. The chimney was a landmark of Great Yarmouth, and had been the tallest structure in Norfolk.
The current gas power station plant was built on the site by Bechtel for Great Yarmouth Power Limited (a specially formed company owned by BP, Amoco and Arco) between 1998 and 2001. The project was projected to cost ã185million. The plant was operated by GE International, trading as IGE Energy Services (UK) Ltd and was then bought by RWE (trading as npower) in November 2005 for ã155million.
It is a CCGT type power station that runs on natural gas supplied via a diameter high pressure (69-bar) pipeline from the Bacton Gas Terminal to the north-west. It has one 265MWe General Electric Frame 9 (9001FA+E) gas turbine with the exhaust gas heating a Doosan heat recovery steam generator, leading to a 150MWe Hitachi steam turbine. At 420MW, it generates enough electricity for around 350,000homes. It has a thermal efficiency of 57%. The terminal voltage of the plant is 19kV, which meets the distribution network of EDF Energy via a transformer at 132kV. The steam condenser uses about 9tonnes of water a second drawn from the River Yare and discharged out to sea.