Neasden Power Station
1904 Built by the Metropolitan Railway for their electrification project; opened in December 1904. The Neasden site was alongside the Metropolitan Railway's depot and workshops. Coal for the power station was brought in by rail.
1907 Mr. Thomas Parker, consulting engineer for the electrification of the Metropolitan Railway, under whose guidance all the arrangements at Neasden were effected, provided technical and economic details of the working of the power station to The Engineer magazine.
Four turbo-generator sets were installed, served by 14 water-tube boilers, worked at up to 185lb. pressure. The turbines were of the "Westinghouse-Parsons" pattern, made by British Westinghouse [1], each of 3500-kW normal power, and capable of 50 per cent overload for one hour. There was a daily momentary peak in the use of each of them of about 100 per cent overload. They ran at 1000 revolutions per minute. The three-phase alternators provided 11,000 volts in each phase at a frequency of 83 cycles per second; there was also a small 100-kilowatt alternator to supply power to various small motors and for lighting the station and yards. The feeders were three-core, paper insulated, with a lead sheath, and steel armoured. Three of the largest size led to Baker street sub-station, which was the distributing centre for the Circle Line sub-stations, and two each of a smaller size led from Neasden to Harrow and Ruislip. Of the 9 sub-stations, most had three 800kW rotary converters each but Charlton street and Moorgate street stations each had three 1200-kW converters, and Baker street station had four 1200-kW rotaries. In all there were 28 substation rotaries, of total capacity 25,200 kW. Each converter was served by 3 static transformers reducing from 11,000 to about 440 volts.
1908 A new 5000-kilowatt generator was installed
1910 One of the original 4 generating sets was uprated to 5000kW and the other turbo-generators were overhauled
1921 Converted to oil firing[2]
1922 A new 12,000-kilowatt generator was installed
From 1933 Neasden and Lots Road Power Station supplied the London Transport network from its formation.
1968 The power station ceased generating.
See Also
Sources of Information
- Wikipedia [1]