Winnington CHP

I have wanted to get out for a night shoot for a while and the weather today was ideal for a trip around the Brunner Mond plants in the Northwich area.

Operated by E.ON UK CHP Ltd, the Winnington Combined Heat and Power (CHP) plant in Northwich, Cheshire, is the largest such scheme in the UK. The scheme supplies a total of 400MW of steam to two Brunner Mond soda ash works, at Winnington and Lostock. Its 130MWe output also supplies the needs of the two sites.

Located at the Brunner Mond's Winnington site, the main CHP plant consists of two gas turbines, two heat recovery boilers, a steam turbine and stand-by boiler capacity. The CHP plant supplies steam & electricity into the site systems. A proportion of the steam used is returned to the CHP plant as condensate.

The fuel for the Winnington plant is natural gas which is supplied through an 11km underground pipeline from the National Gas Transmission System at Nether Tabley to the Winnington site.

The Lostock site is supplied with steam from the Winnington CHP plant via two 5km over ground steam mains. Upon delivery to Lostock, some of the steam is passed straight to the site processes. The remainder of the steam is passed through a steam turbine located on the site, and in doing so generates more electricity before it is sent into the site processes. Again, a proportion of the steam used is returned to the CHP Plant as condensate via a pipeline.