Megawatt Valley Megawatt Valley Megawatt Valley is a term applied to a geographic location which houses a large number of electric generating stations. Historically in the United Kingdom this applied to the coal-fired power stations of the lower Trent Valley. In the mid-1980s, the valley's 13 facilities generated up to a quarter of the power demand for England and Wales. A shift to gas-fired power stations saw many of the Megawatt Valley facilities close down. The term was then associated with an area of Yorkshire centred on the River Aire that was home to Ferrybridge C, Eggborough and Drax power stations. Only
Yorkshire and the Humber stations along the Aire Valley, with Drax being the second largest in Europe with 3,945 MW of capacity, and Eggborough which is owned by the Czech Republic's Energetický a průmyslový holding (EPH) since 2014 and was owned by British Energy until 2010; Ferrybridge C closed on 23 March 2016. The distribution area once looked after by the regional electricity company Yorkshire Electricity is now looked after by Northern Powergrid (former YEDL), owned by Berkshire Hathaway (since 2001) of Omaha, Nebraska. The supply side of the region is now owned by npower (former National Power, now owned by RWE of Essen,