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About Cowes
Cowes is an oil-fired peaking plant near East Cowes on the Isle of Wight. It was commissioned in 1982. Its open-cycle gas turbines burn gas oil and start quickly to cover peaks in demand.
Its 140 MW of registered generating capacity is spread across 2 balancing mechanism units. Every half hour each unit tells the grid how much it will generate (its physical notification): that is the live figure above, and GridMonkey records it every half hour for the chart.
Oil-fired peaking plants are gas turbines that burn gas oil, a fuel much like diesel. They start in minutes but cost a lot to run, so they run only in short bursts at peaks or when the grid is short of power, and most of the time show zero.
| Type | Oil-fired gas turbines (OCGT) |
|---|---|
| Registered capacity | 140 MW |
| Commissioned | 1982 (DUKES 5.11) |
| Area | Isle of Wight |
| Location | Near East Cowes on the Isle of Wight 50.747° N, 1.286° W |
| Owner or operator | RWE |
| Elexon lead party | RWE Generation UK plc |
| BM units | E_COWE1 70 MW, E_COWE2 70 MW |
| Size | 2nd largest of the 4 oil-fired peaking plants on GridMonkey's list |
Other oil-fired peaking plants
- Taylor's Lane 144 MW, London
- Indian Queens 140 MW, Cornwall
- Didcot OCGT 100 MW, Oxfordshire
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Contains BMRS data © Elexon Limited copyright and database right 2026 (licence). Station names, areas and owners or operators come from GridMonkey's own table, matched to the units in Elexon's register; a station's output here is its physical notification, not metered generation. Year commissioned: Power stations in the United Kingdom (DUKES 5.11) (Department for Energy Security and Net Zero, May 2026). Contains public sector information licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0. Map position: © OpenStreetMap contributors.