Work starts on expansion of Spalding Power Station which will create enough electricity for one million homes
A £100million expansion of Spalding Power Station, creating up to 140 jobs, is under way.
Cranes and steel girders are now in place at the site, off West Marsh Road, Spalding, where a new, open-cycle gas turbine is being built.
Spalding Energy Expansion, as the project is called, is being led by Edinburgh-based energy company InterGen which runs the site.
Construction of the 945mw facility, due to be ready for operation this summer, has been financed by German and Spanish banking groups Nord/LB (Norddeutsche Landesbank) and Santander respectively.
An Intergen spokesman said: "Once operational, scheduled for the summer of 2019, the new facility will generate 300MW of power and will employ 140 direct workers at the peak of its construction.
"Local services are being used extensively throughout the duration of the building work and the plant will be operated by staff at the existing Spalding power plant when construction is completed."
When completed, the expansion will consist of a 645mw combined cycle gas turbine (CCGT) and an open- cycle gas turbine unit of less than 300MW.
It will produce enough electricity for about one million homes by using a mixture of water vapour and carbon dioxide, but without the emission of odours.
Planning permission for the expansion was granted by the Department of Energy and Climate Change in November 2010, with revised consent in October 2015.
Speaking in February 2018, InterGen's chief executive officer Tim Menzie said: "Spalding Energy Expansion will provide much-needed peaking capacity to the grid for UK electricity consumers.
"In addition, the project is close to existing gas and electrical infrastructure and will benefit from our UK platform, including the adjacent Spalding Power Station."
Alejandro Ciruelos, head of project and acquisition finance infrastructure for Santander Corporate Banking UK, said, "We are extremely pleased to be supporting InterGen in the Spalding Energy Expansion Project from a financing perspective.
"This is a landmark transaction in the UK power market as it will provide our electricity system with additional flexibility to react promptly to sudden variations in consumer demand or unplanned outages in baseload power generation.”