Lynemouth ceiling collapse takes biomass plant off line

Czech-Slovak utility EPH's 396MW biomass-fired Lynemouth plant in northeast England will be off line for a little over a month, it confirmed to Argus today, following a ceiling collapse in the power station's control room.

"An incident occurred on 14 October whereby the ceiling located within the power station's control room unexpectedly came down," Lynemouth Power said. "Whilst no members of staff were injured, those present were checked by our own medical staff for minor first aid."

The control room was evacuated and all three of the plant's 133MW units were immediately shut down. The plant's unit 1 is set to resume operations on 14 November, while units 2 and 3 are pegged to return on 16 November, remit data show.

An "immediate internal investigation" as to the cause of the incident has been launched, Lynemouth said.

Lynemouth had an average capacity availability of 82.77pc in the third quarter of 2020, up from 67.98pc in the third quarter of 2019, but down by 3.2pc from 85.5pc in the second quarter of this year. The plant requires around 1.4mn t/yr of wood pellets when running at full capacity.

By April Poore