Grain power station was built on a 250-acre (100 ha) site for the nationalised Central Electricity Generating Board.

The larger buildings had curved eaves and slightly pitched roofs, an attempt to reduce the visual impact of the site.

The station had the second-tallest chimney in the UK, at 244 m (801 ft),[8] visible from a wide area of North Kent and parts of South Essex.

The two remaining oil-fired generating units were mothballed by Powergen in 2002 and 2003,[10] but almost immediately the company began to consider reopening the plant as electricity prices increased rapidly.

In April 2014, the dismantling process at the site began, being carried out by Brown and Mason Ltd;[14] it was expected to take around two years to complete.

Rotational capability plant was being operated at Grain, Ince and Littlebrook oil-fired power stations; this was in the context of the 1984–5 miners strike.

It consists of three natural gas-fired combined cycle gas turbine units capable of generating enough electricity to supply around one million homes.

[20] The power station also operates in a combined heat and power (CHP) mode as it is able to transfer up to 340MW of heat energy recovered from the steam condensation to run the vaporisers in the nearby liquefied natural gas terminal, allowing for a reduction in carbon emissions of up to 350,000 tonnes a year.

They have three rows of variable guide vanes on the compressor stage giving a high turndown ratio.

Natural gas is supplied to Grain through a 3.5 km pipeline from an offtake on the National Transmission System.

Electricity from the station is fed via step up transformers into the National Grid at the existing 400 kV compound.

[19] The local soil, alluvium overlying London Clay, is poor quality to support heavy structures.

The condensers are connected to the submerged combustion vaporisers (SCV) in the LNG plant by two 2.5 km pipelines (water supply and return) 1.4 m in diameter.

In this mode the SVCs use the warm closed circuit demineralised water system to vaporise the LNG instead of natural gas.

Material selection and water chemistry are designed to prevent stress corrosion cracking of the stainless steel SCV tube bundles.