U.K. Drax Coal-fired Plant Cleans up Act

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Written by Martin Lynch, European News Editor for Industrial Info (Galway, Ireland) -- The U.K.'s largest coal-fired power plant, Drax Power Station in Selby, Yorkshire, is on track to finish a €125 million ($160.6 million) steam turbine upgrade this month that will help cut its CO2 emissions by an additional one million tons a year.

The project is the largest steam turbine modernisation program in U.K. history, according to project leader, Siemens Energy, part of German engineering firm, Siemens (NYSE:SI) (Munich, Germany). Siemens Energy secured the contract to modernise all six units at the power station in 2007. The power station, owned by Drax Group plc (LSE:DRX) (Selby, England), has a generating capacity of 4,000-megawatts (MW).

Over the last five years, Siemens has replaced the low pressure and high pressure turbines on all six units at the power station. The new turbines consist of 28 separate turbine rotors weighing over 2,800 tons, and contain over 80,000 individualised turbine blades. The turbine modernisation programme increase the plant's overall efficiency from 35% to 40%.

"We are delighted to have been part of this key project for Drax and to have contributed to its carbon emission reduction and efficiency targets so significantly," said Darren Davidson, Head of Projects Energy Service Fossil, Siemens Newcastle said. "Over the past five years, each unit has been delivered successfully and on schedule."

Drax production director Peter Emery added: "The completion of this project makes our turbines amongst some of the most efficient in the world. As the UK's largest coal-fired power station, we take our responsibility to cut carbon emissions seriously and this project marks a significant milestone in our efforts to do that."

The Drax plant was to be the home of a 299 MW dedicated biomass plant but owner Drax Group pulled the plug on the project, blaming the U.K.'s government's lack of financial support for biomass projects. For additional information, see February 24, 2012, article - Drax Scraps U.K. Biomass Project.

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