Willington `B’ was designed to mirror one half of Willington `A’ and started generating in 1962 with the second unit commissioned in 1963. It consisted of two Babock & Wilcox reheat boilers each fired by eight `E’ type Mills supplying steam to two 200MW AEI Turbines.
View of Willington B
Like `A’ station, the design was a little unusual with the boilers being completely outdoors with the exception of the mill bay. Even the Deaerators were outside and great care had to be taken in winter months to ensure that all the required precautions were in place to prevent frost damage and loss of vital instrumentation. The size of the mill bay was also kept to a minimum by having the mills belt driven which allowed the motors to be set alongside each mill in a more compact manner.
Willington ‘B’ was a development station and had most of the technology of the larger 500MW units that came along a few years later with the exception of steam driven feed pumps and direct contact feed heaters. In later years, due mainly to the innovation of key staff, Willington `B’ was used to showcase modern technology such as electronic governors and all the very latest computerised control and instrumentation. This put it way ahead of the game in relation to other power stations in this respect.
However none of this stopped National Power from closing Willington `B’ down without having to offer it for sale to another company. They skillfully negotiated their way through Ofgem’s rules on competition by initially scrapping Unit 5 in 1998 with the intention shipping the alternator to newly acquired Hazlewood power station in Australia for spares. They then closed the non-viable Unit 6 a year later in 1999.
