GE says UK Baglan Bay power plant to restart in '09

LONDON Nov 4 (Reuters) - Britain's Baglan Bay gas fired power station is expected to restart by the end of December after an outage, a spokeswoman for operator General Electric (GE.N) said on Wednesday.

The 525-megawatt power plant has been out of service since May, according to data from National Grid (NG.L), But data shows it being sporadically available to generate power this week in a way consistent with testing. <0#UKBM-GAS>

"Baglan Bay was shutdown due to a forced outage," a spokeswoman for GE Energy said.

"Investigation and restoration is in progress and the unit is expected to return to commercial operation by the end of 2009."

GE Energy said in 2007 it might sell the power plant at Port Talbot in Wales but will not take a decision on the sale until after the return to commercial operations, the spokeswoman said. (Reporting by Daniel Fineren; Editing by Toby Chopra)