Fulham Power Station

Fulham Power Station was a coal-fired power station on the north bank of the River Thames at Battersea Reach in Fulham, London

Station A ran from 1901, with station B opening in 1936, until their decommissioning in 1978.

The original power station was first commissioned in May 1901 by Fulham Borough Council. The initial station was multi fired by local refuse and coal powering six Babcock and Wilcox boilers. These powered 3 x Musgrave "Corliss" 450 BHP engines drive 3 x General Electric Company 2 phase, 2,800 Volt 300 kW alternators. By 1907 a Bellis & Morcom driving a 1,000 kW 2 phase alternator and a 750 kW Curtis turbine had been added. Steam for these was provided from four Stirling water-tube boilers each with an evaporative capacity of 15,000 Ib. per hour.

In 1925 the station was expanded with the installation of 2 x Metropolitan Vickers 6,000 kW 6,600 Volts 50 Hz turbo alternator sets. These were powered by steam from three Vickers boilers rated at a normal evaporation of 40,000 lb. per hour, 275 lb. per sq. in.

The generating capacity, maximum load, and electricity generated and sold was as follows:

In 1930 there was an official inquiry into the building of the station. With a potential coal burn of upto 2,000 ton per day there was concern at the level of grit and sulphur emissions in such an urban area. The Electrical Commissioners gave consent in early 1931 and the site began to be cleared of houses and workshops. Even then it was not until 1934 that the Council had been able to acquire enough land for the storage of nearly a month’s reserve of coal, a necessary adjunct to a base-load station.

Situated on a fifteen-acre site in Townmead Road, Fulham, adjacent to the Corporation’s existing power station, the new station has a river frontage of 1,310 ft. A reinforced-concrete coaling jetty, 360 ft. long, is capable of berthing two of the undertaking’s three sea-going colliers of 2,300 tons cargo capacity, either of which can be unloaded in 6 hours. The site could store upto 50,000 tons. Additionally there was an 800 ton bunker serving each pair of boilers.

The station was designed to have an output capacity of at least 310 megawatts (MW), the largest of any municipally owned station in the UK. It was designed by G.E. Baker and Preece, Cardew and Rider, and engineered by W.C. Parker. At opening it contained 2 x 60MW Metropolitan Vickers turbo alternators and a 10MW Brush-Ljiingstrom house set. These were fed with steam from six tri-drum Stirling boilers of 260,000 lb/hr.