Barry Power Station

For the 2,671-MWe power station in Alabama, U.S., see James M. Barry Electric Generating Plant.
Barry Power Station

Barry Power Station
Location of Barry Power Station in Wales
Country Wales, United Kingdom
Location Sully, Vale of Glamorgan
Coordinates 51°24′29″N 3°13′43″W / 51.408134°N 3.228712°WCoordinates: 51°24′29″N 3°13′43″W / 51.408134°N 3.228712°W
Status Operational
Construction began 1997
Commission date 1998
Operator(s) Centrica
Thermal power station
Primary fuel Natural gas
Combined cycle? yes
Power generation
Units operational 1 x 160 MW
1 x 75 MW
Make and model Siemens
Nameplate capacity 230 MWe

Barry Power Station is a 230MWe gas-fired power station on Sully Moors Road in Sully in the Vale of Glamorgan, Wales. It is eight miles west of Cardiff and is next to a large Ineos Vinyls chemicals works that makes PVC and a Hexion Chemicals plant.

History

Construction began in January 1997, and it was opened on September 7, 1998, being owned by the AES Corporation, but trading as AES Barry Ltd. Until 2000, it ran as a baseload station. It was bought by Centrica on July 24, 2003 for £39.7m. AES sold the plant because of the low price of electricity at that time.

The closure of the plant was proposed in Centrica's accounts in February 2012, but the following month a contract was signed to use it to supply peak power.[1] This required a reconfiguration to allow full load to be reached more quickly, and redundancy for a third of the workforce.[1] It is now run in an open-cycle mode, halving operating costs, with the option of switching to combined-cycle mode after an hour.[2]

Specification

It is a CCGT-type power station. There is one 160 MWe Siemens V94.2 gas turbine (built by Ansaldo Energia in Genoa and now called the SGT5-2000E) that feeds exhaust gas at 544C to a heat recovery steam generator. Steam from this enters a 75MWe steam turbine running, like the gas turbine, at 3000 rpm. Exhaust steam is passed through an air-cooled condenser and returned to the system as de-aerated feedwater for the HRSG. It connects to the Western Power Distribution section of the National Grid via a substation at 132kV. The generator on the gas turbine is rated at 180MVA and has a terminal voltage of 15kV; the steam turbine's is 11kV.

The plant is 44% thermally efficient. The chimney is 60m high.

References

  1. 1.0 1.1 Seal, Chris (15 March 2012). "Barry Power Station to remain open, but jobs will be lost". Barry & District News.
  2. "Centrica runs Barry gas plant (230 MWe) in open-cycle mode at end of life-time". Gas To Power Journal. 26 October 2012.

External links