1894 Brighton Corporation took over provision of electricity for the town by acquiring the Brighton and Hove Electricity Supply Co and combining it with its own operation.
By 1899 it had been clear to Brighton Corporation that a new power station was needed in the town to cope with rising demand. A 10 acre site on the eastern arm of Shoreham Harbour at Southwick was acquired.
1902 Construction of the new station started under Arthur Wright.
1906 The new station was commissioned and the old plant in North Road closed in 1908.
The station would later be designated Brighton "A" power station.
By 1916 the plant was equipped with four 1800-kilowatt and one 3000-kilowatt turbo-alternators, and nine coal-fired Babcock and Wilcox boilers.
1937 Extension.
1947 Construction started on a second station on the site, Brighton B Power Station, the first being put on standby. It was brought into operation from 1950.
c.1988 The power stations were demolished.
1924 From Engineering:-
'A public electricity supply was established in Brighton in 1882 by Messrs. Hammond and Co., and the corporation in the following year obtained a Provisional Order for themselves. As is often the case with public authorities, however, they decided pioneering risks to others, and it was not till 1890 that they installed their first plant at the North-road Power Station. In 1900 it was decided to construct a new station at Southwick, on the eastern arm of Shoreham Harbour, and the capacity of this has been extended from time to time, until to-day the machines have a rated output of 20,000 kw. On page 371 in Fig. 1 we reproduce a view of the turbine room as it now exists and in Fig. 2 we show separately the latest addition to the plant which was “ officially ” brought into operation on Wednesday last. This machine is rated at 6,000 kw. but will carry an overload of 25 per cent, for two hours. It was supplied by the Metropolitan-Vickers Electrical Company, Limited, of Trafford Park, Manchester.
'Three-phase current is generated at 8,000 volts, the periodicity being 50 per second. The machine runs at .3,000 r.p.m. The condenser has 12,000 sq. ft. of cooling surface. Auxiliary plant installed at the same time comprises a gear-driven direct-current turbo-generator constructed by Messrs. W. H. Allen, Sons and Co., Limited, of Bedford. This is represented in Fig. 3. It has a rated capacity of 400 to 500 kw. and has been provided to maintain a supply in times of emergency. The auxiliaries ordinarily in use are steam driven. To the boiler house two Yarrow marine type boilers have been added, of which one is oil-fired and the other coal-fired with Underfeed stokers. Economisers have been dispensed with, the waste heat being utilised instead to pre-heat the air entering the furnace. A view of one boiler is reproduced in Fig. 4. Each of the new boilers has a rated capacity of 40,000 lb. of steam per hour. The designed working pressure is 250 lb. per square inch, and the intended steam temperature 600 deg. F. The oil-burning gear has been supplied by the Wallsend Slipway and Engineering Company, whose apparatus has also been fitted to three of the nine Babcock and Wilcox boilers which are also installed. The storage tanks for the oil will hold 1,000 tons. Oil firing has special advantages when heavy peak loads have to be dealt with. Brighton being largely a residential town, the peaks in the load curve are somewhat more prominent than in industrial towns of similar size. The old generating station at North-road has been turned into a sub-station and is interlinked with the power station by five trunk feeders each of one-quarter square inch section. The aggregate rated capacity of these five lines is 15,000 kw. There are in addition three smaller sub-stations of which that at Kemp Town is of interest in that it is the only one which is automatic, but can at will be "remote controlled" by pilot wires from the main sub-station at North-road. A full description of the Peebles-Reyrolle system of automatic control, which has been adopted here, will be found on page 323 of our last issue.' [1]