page_title: Drax Power Station
section_title: Coal supply
hierarchical_section_title: Drax Power Station / Fuel supply / Coal supply
caption_attribution_description: English: Drax Power station Coal rotating loader
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 station has a maximum potential consumption of 36,000 tonnes of coal a day.  In 2011, it consumed  9.1 million tonnes of coal. This coal comes from a mixture of both domestic and international sources, with domestic coal coming from mines in Yorkshire, the Midlands and Scotland, and foreign supplies coming from Australia, Colombia, Poland, Russia and South Africa.
  Fuel and other bulk commodities are supplied via a 6 mile branch line off the Wakefield and Goole railway line. Rail facilities include a west-facing junction on the Goole line, gross-weight and tare-weight weighbridges, limestone and gypsum handling facilities, including a handling building and control room for the flue gas desulphurisation (FGD) plant, FGD Sidings G and H, biomass offload (Track A), coal offload (Tracks A, B and C), bypass line (Track D), oil siding (Track E) and ash loading (Track F) and an unloading building and control room.
  When the station opened, most of the coal burned was from local collieries in Yorkshire, including Kellingley Colliery, Prince of Wales, Ackton Hall, Sharlston Colliery, Fryston Colliery, Askern Colliery and Bentley Colliery. Following the miners' strike in the mid-1980s, by 2006, all but Kellingley had closed. (Kellingley closed at the end of 2015.) UK Coal had a five-year contract to supply coal, which ended at the end of 2009, from Kellingley, Maltby and, until its closure in 2007, Rossington. Coal was also brought from Harworth Colliery until it was mothballed, and was supplied by Daw Mill in Warwickshire.
  The foreign coal is brought via various ports by rail. In c.2007 GB Railfreight won a contract to move coal brought from the Port of Tyne, celebrated by the company naming one of their locomotives Drax Power Station in 2007. DB Cargo UK haul coal from the nearby ports of Hull and Immingham, and from Hunterston Terminal on the west coast of Scotland. Freightliner Group move coal imported through Redcar.
caption: The rotary coal loader feeding the plant from the stockyard.
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