UK Power Reserve's Carrington gas fired power station is nearing completion with the delivery to site in July of the last of a fleet of 10x2 MW Cummins gas-fired containerised gensets.
UK Power Reserve’s Carrington gas fired power station is nearing completion with the delivery to site in July of the last of a fleet of 10×2 MW Cummins gas-fired containerised gensets. The plant is scheduled to go on line by the end of the summer and is the first of 26 similar sites being developed by UKPR. By the time its construction programme completes in 2018, the company’s portfolio will have nearly quadrupled to 693 MW – the largest portfolio of its kind in the UK and EU.
The UK government has endorsed the installation of independent embedded generation through its annual Capacity Market. At the first two auctions, in 2014 and 2015, UKPR won contracts for a total of 508 MW, more than any other bidder.
UKPR is currently building gas fired power stations totaling in excess of 500 MW of rapid response power capacity for the UK market, contracted to help balance supply and demand for electricity, particularly at times when the gap between the two is tight.
The Carrington, Manchester, is a typical UKPR plant consisting of a series of modular natural gas generators producing an aggregated export of 20 MW along with the associated balance of plant. These sites are designed in such a way that they can be controlled and monitored remotely from the company’s ‘virtual power plant’, located near Birmingham, when called upon by National Grid via the wholesale and ancillary services markets to help balance supply and demand in real time.