# Ferrybridge C power station I am new to this so please be kind :)



## Jimb00b (Nov 16, 2016)

*In the 1960s, Ferrybridge C power station was opened with a generating capacity of 2 GW from four 500 MW sets; constructed by Central Electricity Generating Board (CEGB) in 1965; on privatisation in 1989 ownership was passed to Powergen, then to Edison Mission Energy (1999), then to AEP Energy Services (American Electric Power) (2001) and to SSE plc (2004). C power station closed in March 2016.

Two of the four units were fitted with flue-gas desulphurisation (FGD) plant in 2009. In 2013 SSE indicated that the power station would not comply with the Industrial Emissions Directive (2010/75/EU) requiring the plant's closure by 2023 or earlier. It has since been announced that the plant will be fully closed by March 2016.

Hope the pictures are ok for you.

Hopefully and fingers crossed I know someone really well who is on the decommissioning team so I hope to get inside a cooling tower and will hopefully get the pictures for you*






*Channels that link all the cooling towers*





*One of the channels and the walkway across*





*Cooling tower base*





*Supports and concrete mesh system*










*Conveyor system linking to the waste pit*





*Conveyor for using bio mass I believe to supplement the coal*










*Access to the silo didn't venture in don't like the dark lol*





*I think the Bio mass Silo*





















*Some kind of filler system for trucks*





*One of the two huge chimneys got to touch it later but my battery went flat *










*Looking inside the 33kv room been a sparky and knowing what 33kv can do decided against going in and I've got a chair as I've seen people always have a chair*


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## mookster (Nov 16, 2016)

Please be advised to any would be explorers who think this looks 'a bit of alright'.

This place is no joke to get into. The cameras inside the turbine hall/control room/etc are live and monitored 24/7, as part of the control room contains live machinery still hooked up to the national grid. So anyone caught inside is likely to be in deep doo-doo.


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## druid (Nov 16, 2016)

Nice report and photos.

Not convinced about your 'biomass' silo - biomass silos tend to be significantly larger than that. Wasn't aware that Ferrybridge C had used any biomass fuel.

The razorwire suggests a heavy dose of paranoia since it shut.


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## SlimJim (Nov 16, 2016)

Decent if you know someone who can give you a look around power plants  They're a major league faff to get into otherwise. High pressure, stressful stuff. Decent first report


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## Jimb00b (Nov 16, 2016)

druid said:


> Nice report and photos.
> 
> Not convinced about your 'biomass' silo - biomass silos tend to be significantly larger than that. Wasn't aware that Ferrybridge C had used any biomass fuel.
> 
> The razorwire suggests a heavy dose of paranoia since it shut.



Thank you for your input ferrybridge has just opened a new bio mass facility on the existing site to replace the old coal fired one there just finishing a second at the moment I was unsure what it was but what lead me to believe it was biomass was at the end of the first conveyor there was a unit that said "Extremely strong magnets do not approach if you have a pacemaker fitted" which lead me to assume that was to remove foreign objects i.e. nails from what ever was leading up to the main furnaces and I agree everything is covered in barbed wire even down to the bottoms of the perimeter fences


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## Jimb00b (Nov 16, 2016)

Thank you guys


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## UrbanX (Nov 17, 2016)

Nice one good first report!


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## smiler (Nov 17, 2016)

Great report and a lovely set of pics, that razor wire does look nasty


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## CridlingJimbo (Dec 7, 2016)

Ferrybridge burnt biomass co-fired with coal in three phases over the years. The tube conveyors were phase III which used wood pellets in a pre-combustion gasification process.
The new multi-fuel sites are not replacements for the coal station! Their combined output will be about 120MW compared to the four 500MW coal units. Their primary purpose is to incinerate waste and thus save landfill tax. As such they're purposely designed to be inefficient in terms of thermal energy transfer. The electricity output is a fop to the politicians.
The truck filling photo shows one of two silos and filling systems that were used to fill tankers with PFA, pulverised fuel ash, used in the concrete industry.

Further to other warnings, this is still a live site with plenty of nasty stuff that can kill you from several feet away, i.e. electricity. Give it a few more months before you really go nosing around.


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## CridlingJimbo (Dec 7, 2016)

Jimb00b said:


> ... I was unsure what it was but what lead me to believe it was biomass was at the end of the first conveyor there was a unit that said "Extremely strong magnets do not approach if you have a pacemaker fitted" which lead me to assume that was to remove foreign objects i.e. nails from what ever was leading up to the main furnaces...:



Nails would be no problem to a 10E PF mill, it's bits of railway, mining machine teeth and whatever other crap British Coal thought they could get away with that cause the problems, hence the magnetic separators fitted to a couple of main conveyor towers.


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## Pilot (Dec 8, 2016)

Used to drive past Ferrybridge C regularly. It marked the end of a long journey, and I was always glad to see the cooling towers. If I was lucky, and my trip covered a weekend, I could nip over to the Kings Croft at Pontefract where free Yorkshire puds and onion gravy always helped the Tetleys go down. Seems like a previous life now. 

Thank you for,posting.


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## Dirus_Strictus (Dec 8, 2016)

As somebody who worked for the BRB for all his working life, I was a member of the tripartite working group that tried to sort the original 'Merry-Go- Round' system out. CEGB devised a completely new delivery system for their new build stations - Empty HAA hopper wagons were to be pulled through the NCB loading sheds by BR locos and then the trainload would journey to the power station and go through the automatic unloading sheds, with the coal discharging into the power station feed hoppers. The empty train would then journey back to the pit for another loading cycle. The main impetus for this new delivery system was the fact that the new NCB mechanised mining system produced coal in a very fine broken up form - what my Dad would refer to as 'SLACK' when complaining about the quality of the coal going down the coal shoot! CEGB thought 'great we can feed this direct to the boilers straight out of the rail hoppers, no stocks to ground store and a vast reduction of manpower needed to run the process! A committee designed the rail wagon, CEGB built their stations with little provision for rail sidings, and the poor old cash strapped NCB could only use existing loading facilities at most pits - the only new loading facilities ever built were at newly sunk or the odd modernised colliery.

Well it soon went arse over tit when the first freezing winter arrived - the coal froze in the wagons and in doing this jammed the doors close (due to the complicated door opening/closing mechanism being partly inside the wagon and thus buried in coal) and with no sidings at the power stations, the trains were sent off onto BR tracks and sidings. Now enter the Americans - in US of A, freezing of coal hopper contents was/is well known and in the past the US rail companies have sent frozen trains to warmer states to thaw out and wait for temperatures to rise. However an American company invented an antifreeze that could be sprayed on the coal as it tumbled of the conveyor into the hopper - it was very cost effective because very small gallonage was used in the spray. Seeing a solution, CEGB built a freezer that would take a complete HAA wagon at High Marnham Power Station and NCB installed spray gear as various colliery loading sheds. Now picture this; because in winter it was just too chaotic to do the trials at an active power station, all these freezing trials were done at the height of summer at High Marnham - much of the committee's time was spent in the local pub waiting for an unloading slot. The outcome was a total failure; because the mined coal in the UK was of a much finer sieve size than the Yanks, a much greater gallonage of chemical had to be sprayed onto the coals. So my summer days out came to an end eventually after a number of years, CEGB tried to find space for winter ground stocks and BR went down the road of interior wagon coatings as one last hope of solving the problem, some hope! CEGB never did accept that the whole system was an abortion. a disaster waiting to happen. God knows what would have happened if the climate had really fallen into the freezing zone, alternative fuel sources were few and far between back then!


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## Lavino (Dec 8, 2016)

This should not be posted on a open forum. This should be a non-public post only.if your a member of anyother forum you'll be in the shit.


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## mookster (Dec 8, 2016)

Lavino said:


> This should not be posted on a open forum. This should be a non-public post only.if your a member of anyother forum you'll be in the shit.



I wouldn't worry too much, it was obviously a worker or a friend of a worker there officially, who snapped off a few external photos.


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## krela (Dec 8, 2016)

Lavino said:


> This should not be posted on a open forum. This should be a non-public post only.if your a member of anyother forum you'll be in the shit.



The urbex police aren't welcome here...


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## SlimJim (Dec 8, 2016)

Lavino said:


> This should not be posted on a open forum. This should be a non-public post only.if your a member of anyother forum you'll be in the shit.



Calm down calm down lol I think it's essentially a permo visit mate. Not that most NP sites are ever particularly hard to find, they're just mostly hard/take balls to get into so it puts the numpties off.


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## King Al (Dec 8, 2016)

That is one hell of a first report Jimb00b! Very interesting stuff!


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## Lavino (Dec 9, 2016)

oliceman:oliceman:oliceman:


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## Wrench (Dec 9, 2016)

Cracking report thanks for sharing.


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## Pincheck (Dec 10, 2016)

nice one done a number of power station over the years. Well Done mate 

Guys its up to the individual, where they post and what they post not individual forums with hidden sections ! . You want it kept quite you keep it to yourself.


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## UrbexN8 (Feb 14, 2017)

I got banned from "the other" forum because i wouldnt suck up to the "elite" but I done this power station fully about 6 months ago.

Heres the control room







And heres the turbine hall


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## krela (Feb 14, 2017)

Umm short but sweet, that control room shot is the bomb!


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## Lavino (Feb 14, 2017)

@urban n8 isn't this the permission visit you did Nate.


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## UrbexN8 (Feb 14, 2017)

I've never had a permission visit to any power station I've done. I will do a report on this place if you like.


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## krela (Feb 14, 2017)

UrbexN8 said:


> I've never had a permission visit to any power station I've done. I will do a report on this place if you like.



It doesn't matter if it was with permission or without. If you could post a report that would be great.


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## Sean of Wales (Feb 14, 2017)

What's this about 'sucking up' on another forum? Curious.


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## krela (Feb 15, 2017)

No shit stirring or gossiping thank you, from any of you. We don't concern ourselves with what goes on on other forums here. Take it to PMs if you have an issue with something or want to gossip.


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## smiler (Feb 15, 2017)

krela said:


> It doesn't matter if it was with permission or without. If you could post a report that would be great.


 
Absolutely, I would like to see the rest of the set,


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## Sam Haltin (Feb 15, 2017)

Looks promising, I do like a bit of industrial photography so I'd like to see the rest of the shots.


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## prettyvacant71 (Feb 15, 2017)

love the cooling towers, and the pipeporn very tasty too


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## prettyvacant71 (Feb 16, 2017)

sorry dude u must think im trippin!...there are obviously no coolin towers in ur report lol, my laptop is jumpin about all over the show and seems to be swappin pages alot...love ur couple of shots too...and don't worry about any knob-jockeys on forums the real world is full of them too, Ive met my fair share


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