I think the lede that this article buries is that this is the last coal fired power station in the UK. The UK has been burning coal since 1882 so that feels like quite a significant milestone.
The UK has been burning coal since the 13th century for heating so it's an even more significant milestone than that. There was a short ban because of the pollution it caused but otherwise the UK has been continuously burning coal since the late middle ages.
I recommend Coal: A Human History by Barbara Freese. The history of coal in Britain is fascinating and closely intertwined with the birth of the industrial revolution, some of the first workers rights, etc.
The Holborn Viaduct Power Plant, the first coal-fired electric power station in the UK, opened on 12 January 1882:
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holborn_Viaduct_power_station>
Yes, UK / British coal consumption for other uses long predates the 19th century.
See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_active_coal-fired_powe...
Coal takes hours and is not suitable for grid stabilization.
Grid stabilization in the UK is largely provided by hydro like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dinorwig_Power_Station
...which can go from 0 to 1.7GW in seconds. The UK has long used hydro to help with the "tea kettle" effect every time the BBC was between programs or went to commercial.
That's fine, because winter emergency capacity is not the same as grid stabilization. You need some amount of fast-reacting emergency power, but not all your emergency power needs to be fast-reacting. How to build the rest comes down to what's cheaper: extra peaker plants, or extra coal plants that are only used for a week every couple years.
This effect is famous, although of course the BBC does not show commercial content in the UK. I wonder if the effect has diminished with the increased variety of entertainment. Coronation Street now peaks around 5 million viewers, down from 20 million in the 90s [0], and is on a channel that does show ads. Perhaps half time in England football games still creates a big power draw.
[0] https://coronationstreet.fandom.com/wiki/Viewing_Figures
Half time of a pivotal England World Cup game, shown only on commercial TV. I'm pretty sure finals (and maybe semi-finals) are always simulcast on the BBC so it's unlikely to have that commercial break element. There were a few big ones (>1GW) this century for big England games, and a notable one during COVID responses when people put a kettle on and then went outside to clap thank you to NHS workers.
But the other types of events, soap character's murderer revealed, long running drama ends, that sort of thing, are casualties of modern viewing habits - no longer a single identifiable (and potentially disastrous if not allowed for) bump.
The idea is to replace all the fossil fuel power plants with a mix of nuclear power stations, ideally 10 and lots of wind turbines and solar farms.