Keadby Power Station
# Keadby Power Station

Keadby Power Station is a 734 MWe gas-fired power station near Scunthorpe in North Lincolnshire. It lies near the B1392 and the River Trent, and the Scunthorpe-Grimsby railway. Also nearby is the Stainforth and Keadby Canal, which is part of the Sheffield and South Yorkshire Navigation. The station is operated by SSE Thermal.

## History

Keadby Power Station was built on the site of a former coal-fired power station (which opened on 1 April 1952, but closed in 1984). It was commissioned on 22 January 1996, and was opened by Scottish Hydro Electric and NORWEB when the site was in South Humberside. Scottish Hydro bought the 50% share of Keadby Generation Ltd, then owned by United Utilities, in March 1997 for £253 million. It is now owned by Scottish and Southern Energy.

In 1999, Scottish Hydro applied to add another 710 MWe of capacity at Keadby, and a variation to this consent was granted in November 2016. The project, called 'Keadby 2', was announced in May 2018.

In March 2013 the power station was 'deep mothballed' in response to adverse market conditions; it reopened in December 2015 after winning a stand-by contract to provide 734 MWe of capacity.

SSE also owns a 68 MWe capacity wind farm, Keadby Wind Farm, nearby. This was England's largest onshore wind farm, and started operating in July 2014.

## Specification

It is a CCGT type power station running on natural gas. There are two General Electric Frame 9FA gas turbines each rated at 250 MWe. The total thermal input is 1329 MW. Each gas turbine is connected to a heat recovery steam generator which connect to one steam turbine which has an output of 260 MWe. Steam is condensed using water from the River Trent. There is a 25 MWe 11 kV gas turbine available for black starts when there is no power to start producing electricity. The station connects to the National Grid at 400 kV, being used for baseload.

## Keadby coal-fired station

Keadby power station was authorised in 1947 and work on the foundations began in July 1948. It was designed to have a total capacity of 360 MW.

The plant comprised six Stirling radiant type, pulverised fuel, twin furnace boilers. Each boiler had an evaporation capacity of 550,000 lb/hr (69.3 kg/s) of steam, the total evaporative capacity of the completed station was 3,300,000 lb/hr (415.8 kg/s). Steam conditions were 925 psi and 915 °F (63.8 bar and 490.6 °C).

There were six Parsons 60 MW hydrogen cooled turbo-alternators, generating at 11 kV. The first set was commissioned in April 1952, followed by the other sets in November 1952, June 1953, June 1954, December 1954 and December 1955. In 1952 the boiler associated with the first set was the largest yet commissioned in the UK.

The generating capacity and electricity output from Keadby power station is given in the following table.

Keadby generating capacity and output :

| | 1954 | 1955 | 1956 | 1957 | 1958 | 1961 | 1962 | 1963 | 1967 | 1971 | 1979 | 1982 |
| - | - | - | - | - | - | - | - | - | - | - | - | - |
| Installed capacity, MW | 168 | 280 | 336 | 336 | 336 | 378 | 378 | 378 | 360 | 360 | 360 | 360 |
| Electricity output, GWh | 771.61 | 1330.66 | 1990.75 | 2144.09 | 2258.40 | 2369.13 | 2252.196 | 2052.925 | 2031.0 | 1186.19 | 970.29 | 431.18 |

The coal-fired station closed in 1984.

