The BBC broke the news earlier that the power station near Knottingly, West Yorkshire was on fire. Some fifty firefighters attended the blaze that was centred on one of the flue gas desulphurisation units. The power station is being adapted to generate some electricity from biomass, so was shut down. As of time of publication there are no casualties reported.
When the power station will be able to restart is now in doubt. By winter, now seems doubtful, so will be a test of the generation network
The Bishop Hill blog is running the story HERE
Tallbloke's Talkshop 
Reblogged this on Cornwall Wind Watch and commented:
No need to panic – we have 100s of wind turbines in Cornwall that will step up to the plate! Just look how well one of our wind farms is doing: http://standortkarte.oroe.info/index2.html?lang=en
/sarc off
A BBC report says a tower has partially collapsed in the area that is used to remove sulphur dioxide from the station’s emissions. It doesn’t say if generation can go on without it. (Apparently it can but would be breaching air pollution rules.)
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-leeds-28588714
Note also the later addition – “restart by winter is unlikely”. Great. There goes another 2GW.
Looks like they’ve used up their ROCs for the next ten years.
Bishop Hill update –
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Update on Jul 31, 2014 by Bishop Hill
The Telegraph’s Emily Gosden has just tweeted that restart by winter is unlikely.
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Gulp.
Update on Jul 31, 2014 by Bishop Hill
A statement from SSE suggests that one of the generating units is out for the medium term:
I guess 0.5GW down is better than 2GW down.
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ITV has many videos on the incident (if you like watching fires or firefighters) at
http://www.itv.com/news/calendar/story/2014-07-31/fire-at-ferrybridge-power-station/
.
So now the British public should now demand that solar and the windmills prove their worth and fill the gap.
😉