History
Construction of the first coal-fired power station at Aberthaw commenced in 1957, on the site of a golf course. It was officially opened in October 1963, and contained six 100MW Parsons turbines. The building was closed in 1995 and demolished shortly afterwards, with the exception of the substation - which remains in use today.
Aberthaw ‘B’ was opened in 1971, after only four years of construction. It was capable of producing 1,560MW from a trio of Associated Electrical Industries (AEI) turbines. The boilers were specially designed to burn the semi-anthracitic low-volatile Welsh coal, together with imported bituminous or anthracite coal.
The station was saved from closure by the addition of flue gas de-sulphurisation (FGD) equipment in 2006, to comply with the EU Large Combustion Plants Directive, aimed to reduce sulphur dioxide emissions. The building was also adapted to co-fire biomass, but this stopped in 2017 when generation was limited to only peak times.
In August 2019 the owners of the site, RWE, announced that Aberthaw ‘B’ would close at the end March the following year. The final shutdown of the turbines occurred in December 2019, leaving the coal-yard still piled high with unused coal. It was the last coal-fired power station in Wales, after Uskmouth was shutdown in April 2017 following an explosion.
Explore
Well what an epic week, or two of exploring, fiddlers finally ticked off, twice, hackney, barking, water plants, and Aberthaw. That’s a hectic amount of fuckery for me! I know a lot of you guys make it seem like you don’t work for how often you’s manage to get out and fair play to ya. I was bollocksed after this Aberthaw stint.
Visited with @slayaaaa @Boba Low @Terminal Decline and @xplorer.x . I picked terminal decline up at Bristol and headed over to Aberthaw where we’d sit on the ash mind have a few tins and wait for the others to rock up. After catching up with the others amongst some spiky arse bushes we proceeded to make out way into the beast. It was quite a faff, security were patrolling quite uniformly upto a point, so it wasn’t too bad only a couple of knackering dashes, a bit of climbing here and there and we were in. The place was well locked down, and it was a right fuck about getting in. Cheers lads.
Pics
Looking down over the site from the ash mound, a nice break in the clouds let the stars come out.
This is where we met up with the rest of the group and got cracking.
Slayaaa and Xplorer X keeping tabs on secca
Just to give a sense of scale you can just see the top of this de aerator tank that the lads are stood next to
It’s there on the top level.
Spot a sleeping Slayaaa
Construction of the first coal-fired power station at Aberthaw commenced in 1957, on the site of a golf course. It was officially opened in October 1963, and contained six 100MW Parsons turbines. The building was closed in 1995 and demolished shortly afterwards, with the exception of the substation - which remains in use today.
Aberthaw ‘B’ was opened in 1971, after only four years of construction. It was capable of producing 1,560MW from a trio of Associated Electrical Industries (AEI) turbines. The boilers were specially designed to burn the semi-anthracitic low-volatile Welsh coal, together with imported bituminous or anthracite coal.
The station was saved from closure by the addition of flue gas de-sulphurisation (FGD) equipment in 2006, to comply with the EU Large Combustion Plants Directive, aimed to reduce sulphur dioxide emissions. The building was also adapted to co-fire biomass, but this stopped in 2017 when generation was limited to only peak times.
In August 2019 the owners of the site, RWE, announced that Aberthaw ‘B’ would close at the end March the following year. The final shutdown of the turbines occurred in December 2019, leaving the coal-yard still piled high with unused coal. It was the last coal-fired power station in Wales, after Uskmouth was shutdown in April 2017 following an explosion.
Explore
Well what an epic week, or two of exploring, fiddlers finally ticked off, twice, hackney, barking, water plants, and Aberthaw. That’s a hectic amount of fuckery for me! I know a lot of you guys make it seem like you don’t work for how often you’s manage to get out and fair play to ya. I was bollocksed after this Aberthaw stint.
Visited with @slayaaaa @Boba Low @Terminal Decline and @xplorer.x . I picked terminal decline up at Bristol and headed over to Aberthaw where we’d sit on the ash mind have a few tins and wait for the others to rock up. After catching up with the others amongst some spiky arse bushes we proceeded to make out way into the beast. It was quite a faff, security were patrolling quite uniformly upto a point, so it wasn’t too bad only a couple of knackering dashes, a bit of climbing here and there and we were in. The place was well locked down, and it was a right fuck about getting in. Cheers lads.
Pics
Looking down over the site from the ash mound, a nice break in the clouds let the stars come out.
This is where we met up with the rest of the group and got cracking.
Slayaaa and Xplorer X keeping tabs on secca
Just to give a sense of scale you can just see the top of this de aerator tank that the lads are stood next to
It’s there on the top level.
Spot a sleeping Slayaaa
