Drax Power Limited has announced that it has signed a contract with Siemens Power Generation to replace the low pressure and high pressure turbines on all six units at Drax Power Station, near Selby, North Yorkshire, UK.
The project represents an investment of some £100 million and is part of the company’s moves to tackling climate change through reducing its emission of carbon dioxide by 5 per cent. This contract marks the start of the largest turbine modernisation project in UK history.
Replacing the turbines at the power station will improve the overall efficiency of the plant taking it close to 40 per cent, strengthening its position as the UK’s most efficient coal-fired generator. The efficiency improvement feeds through to environmental improvement and will result in a saving of one million tonnes of CO2 each year, equivalent to taking 275,000 cars off the road.
At the beginning of 2006, Drax outlined plans to its investors to deliver value through additional investment. It is fully expected that the upgrade will not only improve efficiency, but also reliability and availability in generation output.
Drax has a long standing relationship with Siemens, which is the original equipment manufacturer of the Station’s existing turbines. Siemens’ UK-based engineers will install new turbines which use the most advanced technology to maximise efficiency. The bulk of the project work will commence in 2008 and will take four years to complete, however, advantage will be taken of the opportunity to conduct some early, limited work during the second of the 2007 planned outages. The work will coincide with major statutory outages for each of the six units, so ensuring that there is no unnecessary lost generation time.
Drax Power Station has also pioneered the use of co-firing technology to burn renewable biomass materials alongside coal. The implementation of proposed changes to the co-firing regulations under the UK Government’s Renewables Obligation will make it possible for Drax to commit to 10 per cent of its electricity coming from renewable sources by the end of 2009, delivering a further two million tonnes saving in CO2 emissions. Combined with the completed turbine upgrade, Drax is set to reduce its annual emissions of CO2 by 15 per cent (based on current output levels) by 2011.
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