The power station was constructed on the riverside site of a former tram depot operated by the London Tramways Company (and before that by the Pimlico Peckham & Greenwich Street Tramway Company, taken over in 1873). An Act of Parliament, The London County Council (Tramways and Improvement) Act 1902, empowered London County Council to construct new tramways, improve existing ones and to "erect maintain and use a station for generating and transforming electrical energy with all necessary engines dynamos plant and machinery."[1]
The station was designed by William Edward Riley, chief architect of the LCC architects department,[2] and built in two sections between 1902 and 1910, to provide power for London County Council Tramways. The first section was formally opened on 26 May 1906 by Sir Evan Spicer, chairman of the county council.[3] Surplus power was used by other electric tramways and the Underground Electric Railways Company of London. The station originally had a coal-fired boiler house, fuelled by coal craned from barges on the River Thames, and an engine room. This housed four compound reciprocating steam engines driving flywheel-type alternators with an output of 6,600 volts at 25 Hz.
Greenwich Power Station, London, viewed from Newcastle Draw Dock on the Isle of Dogs
The station is an early London example of a steel-framed building with a stone-clad brick cover.[1][lower-alpha 1] In area it measures 114m (374ft) by 59m (194ft), with a maximum roof height of 24m (79ft).[5] It is divided into two naves: the west nave, originally the boiler house, is now the turbine hall; the east nave, now largely unused, was the former engine room. The external stock brick walls include Portland stone decorations, notably on the south and north elevations. Corrugated sheeting replaced the original slate roof.[5] The coaling pier was designed by the LCC's chief engineer, Maurice Fitzmaurice.[5]
By 1910 the advantages of steam turbines were well known and four steam turbine alternators were installed in the second stage of the station's building programme. The reciprocating engines installed during the first stage were replaced by steam turbines in 1922.
The two chimneys of stage one were 249ft (76m) high but, following objections from the nearby Royal Observatory (the station was immediately below the Prime Meridian and the meridian of the Altazimuth), the chimneys of stage two were reduced to 180ft (55m) height.[1] The taller chimneys were eventually reduced to the height of the later chimneys during a modernisation programme between 1969 and 1972.[1]
The steam turbines were replaced by Rolls-Roycegas turbine generators connected to Power Turbines from former Stal-Laval, Finspång, Sweden today named Siemens-Energy AB. These originally burned oil, but were later converted to burn oil and gas. The generators are still housed in what was formerly the boiler house. They have a total capacity of 117.6 megawatts (MW), generated at 11,000 volts. This voltage can be increased to 22,000 volts for connection to the London Underground electricity system.[6] The gas turbines were originally introduced to supplement output from London Underground's west London power station at Lots Road. When LU began to use National Grid power supplies in 1998 and Lots Road was subsequently decommissioned, Greenwich became LU's central emergency power supply and London's only original power station still in operation.[7][8] Its six engines provide power if there is partial or total loss of National Grid supplies, enabling safe evacuation of passengers and staff from London's underground network.[2]
In 2015, TfL instigated a 20-year programme to install up to six new gas engines in Greenwich Power Station's Old Turbine Hall. They were envisaged as providing a steady source of reliable, low carbon power for the Tube as well as hot water and heating for nearby schools and homes.[2][9] However, after local objections about increased air pollution,[10] the proposal was withdrawn in December 2016 ‘to allow time for a review of the project to ensure it aligns with the priorities of the new Mayoral administration’.[11] (During 2016, a combined heat and power (CHP) energy centre had been constructed on a nearby Greenwich Peninsula site to provide district heating to an eventual total of 15,700 properties.)[12][13]
Operations
Coal was delivered by barge to the large coal jetty in the river, which stands on 16 Doric-styled, cast iron columns.[6] From 1927, the coal was then conveyed to then white-painted storage bunkers constructed on the west side of the station (following remedial work in 2013, the bunkers were coloured black).[1] After the transition to oil-fired operation, its cranes (previously also used for coal ash removal) were removed and the jetty was modified to allow fuel oil to be pumped ashore from river tankers.[1] However, the pier is now disused as any oil used at the station comes by road tanker.
In 2020, the turbines were switched on once per month on average for up to two hours, and TfL was reviewing the power station's future as emergency back-up power provider.[14] In January 2021, a gas turbine generator contained in a unit on the ground floor was destroyed by fire.[15]
In popular culture
Greenwich Power Station was a location used to accompany the track "Heartland" in Infected: The Movie, a 1986 music video collection featuring The The.[16]
Almost 20 years later, the power station appeared in the music video for "The Importance of Being Idle", a song by the English rock band Oasis which reached number one in the UK charts in 2005.[17]
Notes and references
↑ For non-industrial buildings, the Ritz Hotel, 1904-05, was considered to be London's first major steel-framed structure, though an extension at the Savoy Hotel, 1903-04, slightly predates it.[4]
Electricity generation is the process of generating electric power from sources of primary energy. For utilities in the electric power industry, it is the stage prior to its delivery to end users or its storage, using for example, the pumped-storage method.
A power station, also referred to as a power plant and sometimes generating station or generating plant, is an industrial facility for the generation of electric power. Power stations are generally connected to an electrical grid.
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Lots Road Power Station is a disused coal and later oil-fired and later gas-fired power station on the River Thames at Lots Road in Chelsea, London in the south-west of the Royal Borough of Kensington & Chelsea, which supplied electricity to the London Underground system. It is sometimes erroneously referred to as Fulham Power Station, a name properly applied to another former station a mile south-west along the Tideway.
A fossil fuel power station is a thermal power station which burns a fossil fuel, such as coal or natural gas, to produce electricity. Fossil fuel power stations have machinery to convert the heat energy of combustion into mechanical energy, which then operates an electrical generator. The prime mover may be a steam turbine, a gas turbine or, in small plants, a reciprocating gas engine. All plants use the energy extracted from the expansion of a hot gas, either steam or combustion gases. Although different energy conversion methods exist, all thermal power station conversion methods have their efficiency limited by the Carnot efficiency and therefore produce waste heat.
A thermal power station is a type of power station in which heat energy is converted to electrical energy. In a steam-generating cycle heat is used to boil water in a large pressure vessel to produce high-pressure steam, which drives a steam turbine connected to an electrical generator. The low-pressure exhaust from the turbine enters a steam condenser where it is cooled to produce hot condensate which is recycled to the heating process to generate more high pressure steam. This is known as a Rankine cycle.
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Kingsnorth power station was a dual-fired coal and oil power station on the Hoo Peninsula at Medway in Kent, South East England. The four-unit station was operated by energy firm E.ON UK, and had a generating capacity of 2,000 megawatts. It was capable of operating on either coal or oil, though in practice oil was used only as a secondary fuel or for startup. It was also capable of co-firing biofuel, up to a maximum of 10% of the station's fuel mix. A replacement power station, also coal-fired, was considered by owners E.ON, but plans were abandoned. The proposed replacement attracted substantial public protests and criticism, including the 2008 Camp for Climate Action.
Grain Power Station is a 1,275 megawatts (1,710,000 hp) operational CCGT power station in Kent, England, owned by Uniper. It was also the name of an oil-fired, now demolished, 1,320MW power station in operation from 1979 to 2012.
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