page_title: Drax Power Station
section_title: Design and specification
hierarchical_section_title: Drax Power Station / Design and specification
caption_attribution_description: English: Drax turbine hall out- and inside (scanned) Deutsch: Kraftwerk Drax. Turbinenhalle von außen mit Transformator davor, Innenansicht derselben Wand.
context_page_description: Drax power station is a large biomass and coal-fired power station in North Yorkshire, England, capable of co-firing petcoke. It has a 2.6 GW capacity for biomass and 1.29 GW capacity for coal. Its name comes from the nearby village of Drax. It is situated on the River Ouse between Selby and Goole. Its generating capacity of 3,906 megawatts is the highest of any power station in the United Kingdom, providing about 6% of the United Kingdom's electricity supply.
  Opened in 1974 and extended in the 1980s, the station was initially operated by the Central Electricity Generating Board. Since privatisation in 1990 ownership has changed several times, and it is operated by the Drax Group. Completed in 1986, it is the newest coal-fired power station in England. Flue gas desulphurisation equipment was fitted between 1988 and 1995. The high and low pressure turbines were replaced between 2007 and 2012.
  By 2010, the station was co-firing biomass. In 2012, the company announced plans to convert three generating units to solely biomass, burning 7.5 million tonnes imported from the United States and Canada. This work was completed in 2016 and a further fourth unit was converted in 2018.
context_section_description: The main buildings are of steel frame and metal clad construction. The main features are a turbine hall, a boiler house, a chimney and 12 cooling towers. The boiler house is 76 m (249 ft) high, and the turbine hall is 400 m (1,300 ft) long.
  The chimney stands 259.3 metres (851 ft) high, with an overall diameter of 26.0 metres (85.3 ft), and weighs 44,000 tonnes. It consists of three elliptical flues of reinforced concrete, each serving two of the six boilers, set within a cylindrical 'wind shield', also of reinforced concrete. The top most elements, the 3 cap rings of the flues which extend above the wind shield, are of cast iron. When finished, the chimney was the largest industrial chimney in the world, and is still the tallest in the United Kingdom. The chimney's dimensions, including the height, were dictated by a design total capacity of 5,100 m³/s of gases at 26 m/s. As the station was designed and constructed prior to the CEGB's commitment to Flue Gas Desulpurisation, extensive measures were made to limit acid attack from 'sulphurous condensate', namely the lining of the flues with a fluoroelastomer, and coating of the upper 29.0m of the external surfaces with a mix of acid-resisting tiles and said fluoroelastomer.
  The twelve 114 metres (374 ft) high natural draft cooling towers stand in two groups of six to the north and south of the station. They are made of reinforced concrete, in the typical hyperboloid design, and each have a base diameter of 92 m (302 ft). Other facilities include a coal storage area, flue gas desulphurisation plant and gypsum handling facilities.
  The station is the third largest coal-fired power station in Europe, after Bełchatów Power Station in Poland, and Neurath Power Station in Germany. It produces around 24 terawatt hours (TWh) (86.4 petajoules) of electricity annually. Although it generates around 1,500,000 tonnes of ash and 22,800,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide each year, it is the most carbon-efficient coal-fired power plant in the United Kingdom.
  The design life was set out in terms of number of start-ups and operating "cycles", but with the presumption that the station would operate as a standard 2nd-tier (nuclear stations being 1st-tier) baseload generator in the pattern well established under the centralised state-owned electricity system, it was summarised as "in the order of 40 years". The minimum requirement was for providing 'full load for weekdays, over a spell of 3 months'  with an availability over 85%. Weekend operations were expected to be between 50–100% of full power. Despite this intent for baseload operation, it was designed with a reasonable ability for load-following, being able to ramp up or down by 5% of full power per minute within the range of 50–100% of full power.
caption: Turbine hall (left: outside, right: inside) The taller light-coloured building behind is the boiler house
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