UK Centrica Boosts Brigg Gas Plant

UK utility Centrica is to start this month building a fast-response gas plant next to the existing Brigg power station in north Lincolnshire, it said April 10.

The investment into the 50-MW plant was confirmed in December last year as part of a £180mn ($223mn) investment programme into new flexible power plants across the country.

Comprising of five reciprocating gas engines, the plant has been designed to respond to peaks in demand and be able of producing enough power to meet the needs of around 50,000 households, it said. Construction is expected to take around 15 months. The plant will be operational in winter 2018.  

Once complete, the new plant will operate as a highly flexible ‘peaking plant’ that will be able to go from a cold standstill up to full power in under two minutes – a feature that is becoming increasingly important as more intermittent renewable capacity such as wind and solar comes on line.

(Credit: Centrica)

Last year Centrica won 15-year agreements to build over 500 MW of new capacity from October 2020 in an auction held by National Grid. The other projects it is to build are a 49-MW battery storage facility at Roosecote in Cumbria; another 50-MW plant at Brigg; and a 370-MW combined cycle gas (CCGT) turbine at King’s Lynn in Norfolk (pictured, above). For the latter, it recently awarded a contract to Siemens.

In 2015, Centrica confirmed it would invest £63mn to upgrade its 1.285-GW South Humber Bank CCGT, also in north Lincolnshire, securing the plant's future of the site up to 2027. The upgrade saw new turbine blades installed in partnership with US giant GE. The plant was built in the 1990s. Since 2015 until recently, it operated at only 540 MW.

William Powell