A power station for a large steel-works in Belgium with a huge array of turbines, all of differing ages and designs.
Charleroi, Belgium Abandoned Positioned on the same site as a coke-works, forming part of the vast, now abandoned Cockerill-Sambre steelworks in Charleroi is this rather special power station. The boiler house is a relatively standard affair, fired by a combination of natural gas and coke gas, a by-product of coke production. The boilers had some quite interesting looking bits.
The turbine hall is where things start to get really interesting. An array of turbines are laid out in various configurations throughout the large space. Some of the turbines were real classics of varying ages, and ranging in output from 6.5MW to 75MW. Two of my favourites were an ancient Ingersoll Rand turbine with black cladding and a big blue Escher Wyss, the newest of all the turbines. Other turbines included designs from Alsthom, ACEC and the first Oerlikon I have seen.
Each of the varying designs of turbine were installed at different times. The Escher Wyss had its own boiler house which appeared to be in an extension to the original building, presumably built specifically to power the huge new turbine.
If you liked this report please also check out Darbians' Blue Power Station report on his website.
