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It’s official: Drax will not make its last two coal units available over the coming winter.
The Electricity System Operator (ESO) has confirmed that talks with Drax have now concluded with no agreement reached to keep the coal plants open this winter.
Drax will now continue with the decommissioning process of its North Yorkshire plant which it began after coal generation ceased in April.
Earlier this month, ESO’s director of corporate affairs Jake Rigg told Utility Week that it was “still in talks” with Drax about extending its winter contingency contract.
That is despite Drax previously saying it would be impossible to extend the life of its coal units.
The last two coal units at EDF’s West Burton A plant will also be unavailable as previously expected.
An ESO spokesperson added: “At the request of government in March 2023, the ESO has undertaken discussions with the operators of two winter 2022/23 contingency coal plants to establish whether these arrangements could be extended for a further winter. These discussions have now concluded.
“Both operators have confirmed that they will not be able to make their coal units available for a further winter and have begun the decommissioning process.”
A Drax spokesperson confirmed that extending the life of the units would not be possible “due to a combination of technical, maintenance and staffing reasons”.
Instead, the company is planning to convert the site for bioenergy with carbon capture and storage (BECCS).
Drax Group chief executive Will Gardiner said: “With the right support from the UK government, we plan to invest billions into delivering BECCS at our power station in Yorkshire. Our formal discussions with the UK government on BECCS deployment and parallel discussions about a ‘bridging mechanism’ to support the transition to BECCS have been productive and we are looking forward to continuing these in the coming months.”
The coal reserve was only used once last winter on 7 March when the ESO instructed the two 400MW units at West Burton A to supply power to the grid to help meet the evening peak in demand.
Uniper’s Ratcliffe-on-Soar coal units that also had a winter contingency contract last winter have returned to the market having secured a Capacity Market contract.
The two units have in fact been fired up this month to cope with additional electricity demand during the ongoing heatwave.
The units were fired up on 12 June and still remain online, having generated power for the grid on 11 of the 26 days since.
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