Ferrybridge C Power Station

 Ferrybridge C Power Station is a 1,960 megawatt (MW) coal-fired power station owned by Scottish and Southern. The power station is located in Knottingley, West Yorkshire.

Background
The power station was first commissioned in 1966.

Scottish and Southern Energy have decided to retire the plant by 2015 rather than upgrade pollution controls to meet the requirements of the European Union Large Combustion Plant Directive. In the United Kingdom, the implementation of the Large Combustion Plant Directive requires that plants either install flue gas de-sulphurisation (FGD) equipment or 'opt out' and shut down when they have run for an additional 20,000 hours between 1 January 2008 and 31 December 2015 or at the end of 2015. (Note: the total number of hours in a year is 8,760.)

Scottish and Southern Energy have decided to 'opt out' the Ferrybridge C power station. As of January 2012 the plant had 8326 hours of its 20,000 operating hours remaining. However, Scottish and Southern Energy give no indication in their 2012 annual report when the plant is likely to be closed.

In March 2013 SSE announced that Units 1 & 2 - both 490 megawatt units - "are both currently expected to reach their 20,000 allowed operating hours limit before the end of 2013/14 financial year. Each unit will cease operation immediately and permanently once the allowed hours limit has been reached. SSE will therefore notify National Grid that it will be releasing around 1,000MW of electricity Transmission Entry Capacity (TEC) at this site from 31 March 2014."

The 490MW Units 3 & 4 at Ferrybridge have been retrofitted with Flue-gas Desulphurisation (FGD) technology to enable them to comply with the European Union Large Combustion Plant Directive. SSE states that "they have also been opted-in to the Transitional National Plan under the Industrial Emissions Directive (IED) which provides a number of alternative options for how they will operate through to at least the end of June 2020. SSE has not made a decision on how the plant will operate and this will depend on market conditions and the effects of any future capacity mechanism."

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