Hi everyone, this video was shot a week before demolition which took place on Sunday 3rd December 2023. Unfortunately I was unable to be there for the demolition itself. However the day was shrouded with mist and the cooling tower destruction was barely visible. I hope you like this video of one of the final images before it was lost for all time.
Fiddlers Ferry Power Station was a coal fired power station located in Warrington, Cheshire, England. Opened in 1971, the station had a generating capacity of 1,989 megawatts and took water from the River Mersey. After privatisation in 1990, the station was operated by various companies, and from 2004 to 2022 by SSE Thermal. The power station closed on 31 March 2020. The site was acquired by Peel NRE in July 2022.
With four of its original eight 114-metre (374 ft) high cooling towers still standing and its 200-metre (660 ft) high chimney, the station is a prominent local landmark and can be seen from as far away as the Peak District and the Pennines. The power station was demolished on 3rd December 2023.
The station was built by the Central Electricity Generating Board but was transferred to Powergen after privatisation of the UK's electricity industry in 1990. Fiddlers Ferry, along with the Ferrybridge power stations in Yorkshire, was then sold to Edison Mission Energy in 1999. They were subsequently sold on to AEP Energy Services in 2001, and both were sold again in July 2004 to SSE Thermal for £136 million.
Between 2001 and 2011 the station was featured in the opening and closing titles and was in some background scenes of the BBC comedy series Two Pints of Lager and a Packet of Crisps.
The station generated electricity using four 500 MW generating sets and consumed 195 million litres of water daily from the River Mersey. At full capacity, 16,000 tonnes of coal were burned each day. It also burned biofuels together with the coal. It used SOFA technology to control nitrogen oxide emissions and FGD to reduce the emission of sulphur.
The station was supplied with coal via a freight-only rail line between Warrington and Widnes, running along the banks of the River Mersey. Rail facilities include an east-facing junction on the mainline controlled by a signal box, two hopper approach tracks, gross-weight and tare-weight weighbridges, coal track hoppers, a fly ash siding, a gypsum loading plant and a control building.
Closure
On 18 November 2015, Amber Rudd, the then Minister in charge of the Department of Energy and Climate Change, proposed that the UK's remaining coal-fired power stations will be shut by 2025 with their use restricted by 2023. SSE announced in February 2016 that it intended to close three of the four generating units at the plant by 1 April 2016. However, it secured a 12-month contract in April 2016 and they stayed open.
In March 2017, the power station secured a further short-term contract to provide electricity until September 2018. At this point, the power station employed 160 people, down from 213 the previous year. In February 2018, the station had agreements to supply electricity until September 2019.One unit closed in 2019, reducing capacity to 1.51 GW.
In June 2019, SSE announced that the power station would be permanently turned off and decommissioned by 31 March 2020. On 31 March 2020, the plant was desynchronized from the National Grid, ending nearly 50 years of electricity generation.
Demolition of the station was due to begin in 2020 and was forecast to take up to seven years. The land upon which it sits will be redeveloped, with Warrington Borough Council stating it had designated the land as an employment site.
In September 2020, the operator SSE was fined £2 million by energy regulator the Office of Gas and Electricity Markets, after it concluded that SSE did not inform energy traders that it had secured a new contract to remain open in March 2016, and had risked undermining confidence in the energy market. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, work on the site did not go ahead in 2020.
Ref: en.wikipedia.o...