Barry Power Station

Coordinates: 51°24′29″N 3°13′43″W / 51.408134°N 3.228712°W / 51.408134; -3.228712
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Barry Power Station
Barry Power Station
Map
CountryWales, United Kingdom
LocationSully, Vale of Glamorgan
Coordinates51°24′29″N 3°13′43″W / 51.408134°N 3.228712°W / 51.408134; -3.228712
StatusNon-Operational
Construction began1997
Commission date1998
Decommission date2019
Owner(s)
Operator(s)Centrica
Thermal power station
Primary fuelNatural gas
Combined cycle?Yes
Power generation
Units operational1 x 160 MW
1 x 75 MW
Make and modelSiemens
Nameplate capacity230 MW
External links
CommonsRelated media on Commons

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

History[edit]

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

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 was then run in an open-cycle mode, halving operating costs, with the option of switching to combined-cycle mode after an hour.[2] The plant ceased generation on 31 March 2019 and closed on 10 May 2019 with demolition proposed to commence in summer 2019.[citation needed] It was observed that demolition was well underway by July 2019 and by September 2019, the grey steel chimney had been removed, thus a previously well-defined landmark had disappeared.

Specification[edit]

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

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

References[edit]

  1. ^ a b 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[edit]