Rugeley power stations


The Rugeley power stations were a series of two coal-fired power stations located on the River Trent at Rugeley in Staffordshire. The first power station on the site, Rugeley A power station was opened in 1961, but has since been closed and demolished. Rugeley B power station was commissioned in 1970 and closed on 8 June 2016. It had an output of 1,000 megawatts and had a 400 kilovolt connection to the national grid. The B station provided enough electricity to power roughly half a million homes.

History

Construction of the A station started in 1956. The station's generating sets were commissioned between 1961 and 1962. The station was the first joint venture between the Central Electricity Generating Board and the National Coal Board. The station took coal directly from the neighbouring Lea Hall Colliery by conveyor belt. This was the first such arrangement in Britain. The colliery was put into production some 6 months before the first generating unit was commissioned in the power station. The station was officially opened on 1 October 1963 by Lord Robens of Woldingham and Sir Christopher Hinton.
The first of the five cooling towers to be completed at Rugeley in 1960 was the world's first large dry cooling tower, and the first large scale experiment with a design aimed at eliminating water loss. The dry tower was commissioned in 1962 but its capital and operating costs were considerably higher than a conventional wet tower. No further dry towers were constructed in the UK. On occasions this tower was used by the RAF for parachute development. Rugeley A was also the first power station in Britain to be controlled entirely from a central control room. The total cost of building it was £30 million.
Construction of Rugeley B power station began in 1965, with completion of the station in 1972. The architects were L.K. Watson and H. J. Coates. The architects coloured two of the four cooling towers a pinkish red colour to heighten what they saw as the femininity of the hyperbolic form. With both stations in operation, 850 people were employed at the stations in 1983.
The two stations were initially operated by the Central Electricity Generating Board, but following privatisation in 1990, were handed over to National Power. The Lea Hall colliery was closed on 24 January 1991, meaning all coal burned in the stations needed to be delivered by rail. Rugeley B was supplied with fuel via branch off the adjacent Cannock and Rugeley railway line, near to its connection with the West Coast Main Line. Rail facilities included a west-facing junction on the Rugeley line, A and B sidings, gross-weight and tare-weight weighbridges, a hopper house, an oil siding, a hopper bypass line and a run-round loop. A couple of years later the closure of the A station began. Two of the station's generating units were decommissioned in 1994, with the other three following in 1995. Having burned nearly 42 million tonnes of coal in its lifetime, the station was demolished later in 1995.
In July 1996 the Rugeley B power station was bought by Eastern Generation, itself acquired by TXU Europe. Rugeley B was subsequently sold to International Power plc in July 2001. It remains under the same ownership, though International Power later merged with GDF Suez in 2011.
Construction of a Flue Gas Desulfurization plant started in early 2007 and it was commissioned at the B station in 2009. This allowed the station to comply with environmental legislation in force at the time and continue generating electricity.
146 people were employed in the station.
In March 2012 Rugeley Power Ltd announced it would be considering a conversion to run using biomass fuel. In December 2013, Rugeley Power Ltd said they have scrapped the proposed biomass conversion.

Closure and demolition

In February 2016 it was announced that the power station would close in the summer of 2016. An announcement by owners, Engie blamed a deterioration in market conditions which included a fall in market prices and increasing carbon costs. The closure resulted in the loss of 150 jobs.
Rugeley Power Station ceased all operations on Wednesday 8 June 2016.
Decommissioning began in June 2016 and demolition of the main structures will be complete by the end of 2020. All buildings and structures on site will be demolished by 2021.

"A" Station statistics at closure

Unit 1 - First ran 18/01/1961, last run 27/09/1994
Total hours run - 196,049
Total starts - 3,719
Total generation - 20,097 GWh
Unit 2 - First ran 19/07/1961, last run 26/02/1993
Total hours run - 180,781
Total starts - 4,948
Total generation - 18,882 GWh
Unit 3 - First ran 22/12/1961, last run 26/11/1992
Total hours run - 154,621
Total starts - 4,220
Total generation - 15,912 GWh
Unit 4 - First ran 14/08/1962, last run 28/01/1994
Total hours run - 169,201
Total starts - 4,404
Total generation - 17,526 GWh
Unit 5 - First ran 11/12/1962, last run 09/08/1994
Total hours run - 168,670
Total starts - 3,817
Total generation - 17,261 GWh
Total coal burnt during life time of station - 41,869,969 tonnes

"B" Station statistics at closure

Unit 6 - First ran 09/01/1970, last run 08/06/2016
Total hours run - 285,595hrs
Total starts - 2,764
Total generation - 125,776 GWh
Unit 7 - First ran 15/10/1970, last run 30/12/2015
Total hours run - 289,320hrs
Total starts - 2,705
Total generation - 123,501 GWh

Design and specification

A station

The station had five 120 MW generating sets which gave it a generating capacity of 600 megawatts. The boilers operated on pulverised coal and delivered 540 kg/s of steam at 103.4 bar and 538°C. Rugeley A was one of the CEGB’s twenty steam power stations with the highest thermal efficiency; in 1963–4 the thermal efficiency was 33.34 per cent, 31.75 per cent in 1964–5, and 31.42 per cent in 1965–6. In 1980/1 the station sent out 2,612.838 GWh, the thermal efficiency was 29.56 per cent. The annual electricity output of Rugeley A was:
Year1960–11961–21962–31963–41964–51965–61971–21978–91980–11981–2
Electricity supplied, GWh119.21,379.22,873.13,3613,0582,9532,5442,633.92,612.82,433
Thermal efficiency, %31.1232.8133.0133.3431.7531.4230.5430.0829.5630.94

B station

The Rugeley B station used two 500 MW generating sets, which could produce 8,760,000 MWh each year. The station usually burned 1.6 million tonnes of coal a year, producing 240,000 tonnes of ash. The station's boilers produced 1,100 tonnes of steam per hour, at a temperature of 568 degrees Celsius. In 1980/1 the station sent out 6,724.920 GWh, the thermal efficiency was 35.47 per cent. Rugeley B also had two gas turbine generators installed, each of 25 MW capacity, which were used for emergency unit starts or could generate direct to the Grid when required. It closed in 2016, as a result of a deterioration of market conditions. 30 of 150 staff remained to decommission the plant over 3 years.
The Rugeley B Station chimney is 183m in height, each of the 4 remaining cooling towers are 114m and main boiler/generator house is 74m high