New Power Station at Damhead Creek

ScottishPower this week received government consent to construct a new 1000MW gas-fired power station next to their existing Damhead Creek site, near Hoo (pictured below, courtesy of BBC Kent).

ScottishPower has said that the new £500m Damhead Creek 2 power station, which will be one of the most efficient in the world, could generate enough energy to power almost 1.5m homes. The plant will be built ‘carbon capture ready’ so that, eventually, CO2 emissions from the site could be stored under the North Sea.

In March 2009, ScottishPower said the plans for the new Damhead Creek site would inject an estimated £27m into the Medway economy and would support 1,000 construction jobs (over three years), with 50 skilled jobs created following commencement of operations.

Click here to find out more about ScottishPower.
 

A visit by HM Queen Elizabeth in 1955

Yesterday’s announcement about plans for a new gas-fired power station at Damhead Creek reminded me of a booklet I was shown recently about another of the Peninsula’s energy industries. The booklet was printed in April 1955 to commemorate a visit by HM Queen and Duke of Edinburgh to BP’s Oil Refinery on the Isle of Grain.

The booklet was shown to me by a lifelong resident of the Hoo Peninsula, who worked at the refinery for most of his life. It describes the workings of an oil refinery and explains why a new refinery was needed at the time, how the Isle of Grain site was chosen and the engineering process for reclaiming marshland (known locally as ‘Fleets’). The refinery processed its first crude oil in February 1953, following the decision six years earlier to site the refinery at Grain due to the need for deep water access.