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Concept
Croydon power stations
Summary
The Croydon power stations refers to a pair of demolished coal-fired power stations and to a gas-fired power station in the Purley Way area of Croydon, London.
The coal-fired stations operated from 1896 until 1984, and the gas-fired station opened in 2005. Croydon B power station's chimneys have been retained as a local landmark.
The first power station built on the site, which would later become known as Croydon A power station, was opened in 1896. The station was designed by Sir Alexander Kennedy and built near Croydon Gas Works by the Croydon Corporation. Three 120kW alternating current (AC) generators were installed by British Thomson Houston. A condition of the contract was that British Thomson Houston would initially run the power station, whose resident engineer was Mr. A L C Fell. His chief assistant Charles Merz took over a year later and who in 1925/6 was consulted for Britain’s National Grid as a pioneer of transmission systems. The corporation took over the operation in 1898 and appointed Mr T H Minshall as their chief engineer.
The electricity was distributed at 2,000v to 5 substations, which dropped the voltage down to 200v. Initially the electricity supplied a small compulsory area of about , composed mainly of shops and businesses. Street lighting was also provided by 50 arc lights fed directly from the generating station after rectification to direct current (DC). The standards (lamp-posts) for the arc lights were cast and installed by the local Waddon firm Wenham and Waters Ltd, who also won the contract to light Croydon’s Municipal Building (Town Hall), which opened the same year.
By 1901 the generated power had increased to over 1.8MW, now distributed via 26 substations to supply an area of about to its nearly 800 customers. Separate generators provided an additional 600kW DC and the steam was recycled through 3 wooden cooling towers. To reduce transmission losses, electricity was transmitted at 5,000v to outlying districts and AC was used there for street lighting.
Official source
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