Drax Modernising U.K.'s Biggest Coal Plant

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Written by Martin Lynch, European News Editor for Industrial Info (Galway, Ireland) - Work to modernise and clean up the U.K.'s largest coal-fired plant has progressed with the award of a new contract to upgrade the intermediate pressure (IP) turbines in three of the plant's operating units.

Drax Group plc (LSE:DRX) (Selby, England) has awarded the contract for the Drax Power Station to Siemens Energy Service Fossil (Newcastle, England), a subsidiary of German engineering giant Siemens (NYSE:SI) (Munich, Germany). Siemens has a long track record working on the 4,000-megawatt (MW) power plant in Selby and last year it finished a five-year overhaul of all of the steam turbines in a contract worth €125 million ($160.6 million). For additional information, see related May 12, 2012, article - U.K. Drax Coal-fired Plant Cleans up Act.

During that period, Siemens replaced the high pressure and low pressure turbine modules of all six generating units, which boosted the power station's overall efficiency to almost 40% and reduced its carbon dioxide emissions by one million tonnes per year.

"We have taken the decision to upgrade the intermediate pressure turbines of the three generating units that are to be converted to burn sustainable biomass in place of coal," explained Peter Emery, production director at Drax. "This will optimise the efficiency of those units by helping to offset any loss in efficiency experienced as a result of the change in fuel diet. The project builds on the success of the major turbine upgrade programme completed last year."

A new design means that each intermediate pressure (IP) turbine will be installed as a module, which will make installation easier reduce the outage time needed to install them. The IP modules will be manufactured at Siemens' factory in Mülheim an der Ruhr and will be installed by a joint Drax-Siemens team.

Each IP module weighs 63.5 tons and has 26 rows of blades. The first module will be installed next year with all of them expected to be in by 2015.

Last summer, Drax confirmed its plans to invest up to €893 million ($1.1 billion) to carry out converting half of its coal-fired units for burning biomass. For additional information, see related August 1, 2012, article - Drax Coal-fired Plant Switching to Biomass.

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