# Little Barford Power Station

Little Barford Power Station is a combined cycle gas turbine power station in the village of Little Barford in Bedfordshire, England. It lies just south of the A428 St Neots bypass and east of the Wyboston Leisure Park. The River Great Ouse runs alongside. It was formerly the site of two coal-fired power stations, now demolished. The station is operated by RWE.
The net capacity of 727 MW is sufficient to supply over half a million households.

## History

Little Barford CCGT power station was built on the site of two former coal-fired power stations opened in 1939 and 1959 that had a generating capacity of 126 and 127 MW.

### Little Barford A

Little Barford A station was built and operated by the Bedfordshire, Cambridgeshire and Huntingdonshire Electricity Company. It was authorised in June 1938 and commissioned in 1941. It had an installed capacity of 126 MW and comprised four 31.5 MW English Electric generators. The boilers — two International Combustion and two Stirling — burned pulverised coal and produced steam at a rate of 1,200,000 lb/hr (151.2 kg/s) at a pressure of 650 psi (45 bar) and 482 °C (900 °F). The station was adjacent to the East Coast Main Line railway, coal was delivered and ash was removed via sidings and a connection with the railway (at 49 miles & 69 chains from London Kings Cross). The siding was extant in 2008 but had been removed by 2016. In 1961, the oldest generating set was 20 years old (commissioned in 1941) and the thermal efficiency of the station was 22.63 per cent. Water for condensing was abstracted from the River Ouse and was supplemented with a cooling tower with a capacity of 2,500,000 imperial gallons (11,000 cubic metres) per hour.
The output in GWh over the period 1946-82 was as follows.
The A station was closed on 26 October 1981.

### Little Barford B

Construction of Little Barford B station started in 1959 by the Central Electricity Generating Board (CEGB). It had an installed capacity of 127 MW and comprised two 63.5 MW C.A. Parsons generators. The Foster Wheeler boilers burned pulverised coal and produced steam at a rate of 1,100,000 lb/hr (138.6 kg/s) at a pressure of 900 psi (62 bar) and 482 °C (900 °F). Cooling was by cooling towers. In 1961, the oldest generating set was two years old (commissioned in 1959) and the thermal efficiency of the station was 28.96 per cent. The output in GWh over the period 1961-84 was as follows. The station had completely remote operation of the two 60 MW units. The automatic electronic boiler control system used online computers and process controllers, the first in the UK.
Demolition of both stations took place in 1989, an event covered by the children's TV programme Blue Peter. Two 60 metres (197 ft) and one 75 metres (246 ft) tall chimneys and two 55 metres (180 ft) high cooling towers were blown up.
The two Parsons turbo-alternators of the B station were shipped to Malta. One was recommissioned as Unit 8 at Marsa Power Station and remained in service until 15 February 2015.

### Little Barford CCGT

Construction of the gas-fired station started in 1994, and it opened in 1996. The company that built it, Swindon-based National Power, became Innogy in August 2000. That company was bought by the German electricity company, Essen-based RWE in March 2002, and became RWE npower. The station is now owned and operated by RWE Generation UK.
In 2002, a 12 MWe electrical storage facility was built by Regenesys Technologies (previously owned by Innogy but bought by VRB Power Systems in October 2004) which uses polysulfide bromide flow batteries. However, the facility was never operated commercially due to engineering issues in scaling up the technology.
In 2019, the failure of the plant was partially responsible for a large scale nationwide power cut on the evening of 9 August, after lightning hit a transmission line.
The station was constructed as a turn-key project awarded to GEC Alsthom, with principal equipment supplied by various GEC Alstom divisions including the gas turbine, LP steam turbine, steam boilers, electrical generator and transformers. Civil engineering and building was sub-contracted to Henry Boot. The station underwent an upgrade in 2012.

## Original specification

The site is a Combined Cycle Gas Turbine (CCGT) power station using natural gas. It originally had two General Electric Frame 9F gas turbine engines each producing 220 MWe. Each of these had a Stein Industry heat recovery steam generator which lead to one steam turbine produced by Alstom which produced 256 MWe.

## Upgraded specification

In 2012, the plant was upgraded to General Electric Frame 9FA+e gas turbine engines each producing 241 MWe. They are still connected to the original heat recovery steam generator which led to the steam turbine produced by Alstom which now produces 265 MWe.