Fiddler's Ferry Power Station

Image: © Chris Allen Taken: 9 Jun 2018

The photographer's position is on cleared land at Widnes and is approximate. The aerial photograph shows that this area once had many buildings but it is now returning to nature and is broken underfoot. Fiddler's Ferry Power Station is a coal fired power station that can co-fire biomass and was opened in 1971 with a rating of 1989 MW. There are currently contracts in place to supply power until September 2019. This picture shows that there is some life there with a plume of steam from the boiler house roof. The chimney on the right emitting a white plume is nothing to do with the power station. The black stacks in front of one of the cooling towers are from the gas turbines that can be used to supply the grid in peak periods or for 'black starting' the station. Black starts are rarely needed but if the grid goes down it may be necessary to bring a station up from dead on its own resources. These circumstances did occur in the south during the great storm of 1987 when grid control had to decide to cut a large chunk of the south off to preserve the grid elsewhere as power lines were down and creating dead shorts.

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