Peaking plants Southampton

Peaking plants generate growth for Energy Assets

Programme

Energy Assets is generating growth in the peaking plant market, recently working alongside project managers Stag Energy and Keekle Power, to bring a 20MW gas peaking plant online near Southampton to help the National Grid balance its power requirements.

The plant will enable Keekle Power to provide low cost, dispatchable power to the local distribution system and fulfil its Capacity Market obligation. Peaking plants are being created across Britain and come into operation when there is a peak in demand for power from the electricity grid. We’re one of the leading utility network construction businesses working in the sector, having completed more than 40 such schemes.

The latest project involved the design and construction of a particularly complex gas infrastructure, including a 140m directional drill under the main Southampton railway line to connect the site to the gas network. The 10 gas-fired reciprocating engines generating the electricity required a gas load of 54MW at around 250mb inlet pressure.

Dennis Habergham, Design & Technical Manager, said that a root protection area meant open-trench digging works weren’t feasible, so a non-intrusive directional drilling approach was employed instead.

“The undercrossing of the railway was another one of the major challenges,” said Dennis. “We originally planned a total drill length of 120m passing 7m below the track level, but we had to contend with an unforeseen World War II concrete structure, which meant going deeper and extending the drill length to 140m. The completed supply pipeline was then connected to an IP to LP gas regulator/ meter skid also installed by us.”

Joe Grant, Project Manager at Stag Energy, said that peaking power plants were playing an increasingly important role in balancing the nation’s power requirements due to the increased volume of intermittent renewables which require balancing.

Outcome

We spotted an opportunity in the peaking plant market around four years ago and have since developed a specialist design and network construction team that has gone on to complete more than 40 schemes on behalf of operators.

Nathan Schofield, Sales and Marketing Director, commented: “In addition to our established gas network construction and metering operations, we have also extended our in-house electrical design capability, so that we can deliver a true ‘end-to-end’ service for peaking plant customers. Today, we are one of the leading utility network design and construction companies in this sector in Britain.”