Visited in October 2017 and released back to service in November 2018.

 

We arrived during the night and got in the powerplant land. The mains paths were lighted, so we were moving from shadows areas to others to be discreet. Next to a cooling tower we saw a light beam, it was other explorers. We moved closer to the main building, connected to others smaller ones by walkways. Finally, we found an opened door and after walking for a while on different walkways we were inside the main building.

Inside, electricity was on, all the facility is lighted. 

We started by shooting the laboratory and the lowers floors where the natural light wasn’t useful. All electrical control panels were running, it was actually for air dryers to avoid that the different installations like turbines or pumps, get rusted.

After a while, we took a break and slept a little bit inside the empty control room.

When the sun rose, we got to the roof, I used the elevator but during the lift, I was regretting more and more after each steal friction noise between the cabin and the guiding tracks. Finally, I reached the top, but I went down using the stairs!

We finished our tour by the main turbine generator.

 

This powerplant was built between 1959 and 1964 with 3 production units powered by several fuels (coal, diesel and gas). In 2001 the two first unites was demolished and the third one was upgraded with a combinate thermodynamic cycles providing one or two electric generators. One turbine was powered by exhaust gas from a steam generator providing a second turbine with a thermodynamic steam cycle. The output capacity was around 380 MW. The control room was deallocated and upgraded in order to control 2 more small powerplant from this one.

Instead of that, in 2012, the owner company said that the powerplant wasn’t enough profitable because the steam turbine was very used and needed an important maintenance. Finally, instead of shutting down the facility, the unit was transformed to an thermodynamic opened gas cycle, that’s mean that the turbine is only powered by exhaust gas, but the output power capacity decreased to 265 MW.

Despite this transformation, this facility stopped in January 2014.

It’s only in the middle of 2018, with the lack of power production in Belgium, that Electrabel decided to release back to service this powerplant to avoid the lack of energy during the winter. After an important investment to fix all the installations, the powerplant is working since November 2018.