Wales Getting New Gas-Fired Plant

Written by Martin Lynch, European News Editor for Industrial Info (Galway, Ireland)--A new gas-fired power plant has been given the green light in Wales by the U.K. government.

The proposed Wrexham Energy Centre will be located at the Wrexham Industrial Estate in north Wales and will have a generating capacity of 299 megawatts (MW). After three years of consultation and protests, Wrexham Power Limited was granted planning permission by the Planning Inspectorate, the government agency that oversees power projects in excess of 50-MW capacity and those considered to be a Nationally Significant Infrastructure Project (NSIP). The combined-cycle gas turbine (CCGT) plant will cost roughly £300 million ($397 million).

"We are pleased that consent has been granted, it was a long process," a spokesperson told the media. "The next stage is to seek funding to take the project forward, which we will be looking at sourcing through a mixture of the private and public sector. When we start the construction will depend on how quickly we can source the funding."

Atkins (Aberdeen, Scotland) is the engineering design and environmental consultant for the project. The power station complex will incorporate one gas turbine building with up to two gas turbines and one steam turbine building with one steam turbine, each connected to its own generator. There also will be up to two exhaust gas emission flue stacks, up to two heat-recovery steam generator buildings with up to two heat-recovery steam generators, an air cooled condenser, switchgear room, administrative/control building, heat network interface building, 132-kilovolt switchyard, up to three transformer compounds with up to three transformers, as well as other plant and site infrastructure.

The plant will be connected to the gas network via a 3.5-kilometre (km) underground pipeline. Protests led the company to drop plans for overhead pylons and power cables for the electrical network connection. The connection will be routed underground.

Earlier this week, Industrial Info reported on another new U.K. gas-fired project planned for Tilbury in Essex, near London. RWE npower (Swindon, England) said it has begun the planning process for the 2,500-MW CCGT plant, known as the Tilbury Energy Centre. It also includes plans for an optional 300 MW of open-cycle gas turbine (OCGT) power generation and an energy storage facility. For additional information, see August 1, 2017, article - RWE Pushes Ahead with Major U.K. Gas-fired Project.

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