Tuesday 10 May 2011

Staythorpe Power Station opens

Staythorpe Power Station opens

A new "highly efficient" gas station has officially opened in Newark.

Located near the River Trent, the Staythorpe Power Station should produce up to 7.5 million tonnes less than an equivalent coal-fired power station producing the same amount of electricity.

The station's operator RWE npower expects it to contribute more than £10 million to the local economy.

Kevin McCullogh, Chief Operating Officer at Staythorpe told ELN at the official opening yesterday: "It's about a 1.7GW plant, which in basic terms is enough to power about 2 million homes. It uses high efficiency combined cycle gas technology (CCGT)."

Explaining the process, Mr McCullogh said: "It's the same conventional power process where we take heated fluid - in this case gas - and we power that through a turbine that creates rotational energy. Then we use that heat to drive steam, and in turn we use that steam to drive a new fluid turbine."

This was extremely efficient, he added: "You get something like 60% efficiency… For every one unit of gas that we put in, we get .6 of a unit of electricity out."

Energy Minister Charles Hendry was on hand to officially open the new plant, on a site which has been generating electricity since the end of World War 2.

Written by

Bruna Pinhoni

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