Tata Chemicals Europe has opened a new £5.5m turbine at its Winnington CHP plant in Northwich, Cheshire, allowing the facility to provide energy for 200,000 households – an area the size of Liverpool.
The project - backed by a £2.5m European Regional Growth Fund grant from the UK government - has taken two years to complete. It will help to provide energy for Tata Chemicals Europe’s sites across Cheshire, local businesses in the area, and also for the National Grid.
The steam used to generate electricity is a by-product of industrial procedures at the Tata Chemical plant, effectively recapturing spent energy and reducing overall energy demands.
Generating this electricity means that this volume of electricity doesn’t have to be generated elsewhere on the grid—saving 71,000 tonnes of CO2 in the UK, and going a long way to help the Government meet decarbonisation requirements of a 75% reduction by 2030.
TCE’s General Manager for Energy Peter Houghton said: "This has been an unbelievably good project, and a really complex one that underpins our energy business moving forward. It simply could not be more important to the business.”
Martin Ashcroft, Managing Director of Tata Chemicals Europe, said that the steam turbine is "a great achievement by all involved”.
Dr Ashcroft added: "The installation of this steam turbine was one of our key objectives for the past three years. Along with the restructuring and stand-alone Sodium Bicarbonate plant, the steam turbine is fundamental to the ongoing success of our Northwich operations.”
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