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Now and Beyond 2027 Four years after its conversion from coal to wood pellets, Lynemouth Power Station is evaluating opportunities to extend operations long into the future. BY ANNA SIMET
The Lynemouth Power Station consumes roughly 1.5 million tons of wood pellets annually, which are primarily sourced from Canada and the U.S. PHOTO: LYNEMOUTH POWER STATION
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hen it was first fired up in 1972, northeast England’s Lynemouth Power Station was designed to combust Northumberland coal—and it did, for its first 40 years of operation. During that time, most of the power generated at the 420-MW station was sent to a nearby aluminum factory, Lynemouth Smelter, which closed its doors in 2012. With the possibility of being converted to biomass already in the works, the plant changed hands a few times from then until now, with RWE npower taking over in 2013, and EPH acquiring the facility in 2016, a year after the plant ceased burning coal. When that happened, the biomass project began to gain momentum, says Jonathan Scott, commercial and fuel director at Lynemouth Power Station. “The government was looking at the asset base in the U.K. energy sector and opportunities to reduce emissions—Drax was another candidate— and at Lynemouth, this was done by modifying and replacing parts of the plant, from the coal handling system to the combustion process, with some substantial investments.” 10 PELLET MILL MAGAZINE | ISSUE 1 2022
The project aligned with the country’s ambitious CO2 reductions, and to aid in financials, the U.K. government granted Lynemouth a contract for difference (CfD), a mechanism designed to support low-carbon electricity generation by subsidizing the market price of power generated at the plant. As of now, the CfD extends to 2027. “It has been quite a successful project,” Scott says. “We’ve managed to reduce CO2 emissions substantially while maintaining output and efficiency levels similar to what we had with coal.” Just a few years after reaching full operations on wood pellets, attention is on potential strategies to keep the plant operating long after the CfD ends, according to Scott. He says most recently, much of the focus has been on fuel and potential alternatives to wood pellets—alternatives that are compatible with the converted plant and will allow for maximization of conversion investments, which totaled about $400 million. As for what those investments entailed, Scott begins with one of the major components of the project: its fuel receiving, handling and storage operation at the Port of Tyne.
