Brighton Power Station Installed Plant 1954 – 1978

Tuesday 9th October
“Brighton Power Station Installed Plant 1954 – 1978.” ,
Ray Parsons RCEA
The talk covered Brighton ‘B’ Power Station construction; harbour modifications to take 3,500 ton colliers in place of 1,500 ton ships; ‘B’ Station eleven 320 Klb/hr pulverized fuel boilers; type of flame; milling and dust collection plants, including the 50kV mechanical rectifiers for precipitators. The talk also covered the arrangement of the Richardson Westgarth axial flow turbines with four 55.5 MW sets having air cooled alternators plus two 60MW sets having hydrogen cooled alternators.
Ray then continued by covering ‘A’ Station. The boilers comprised two 350 Klb/hr boilers, four 210 Klb/hr PF boilers, two 180 Klb/hr chain grate boilers and two 180 Klb/hr retort stoker boilers. The Turbine House comprised four axial flow turbines. One Parsons 30MW with 6MW overload features; and two low pressure RW axial flow 14 MW turbines supplied through a 4 MW passout set. It also housed three Brush Ljungstrom radial flow turbines – two 37.5 MW and one 50 MW. The 50MW being the largest turbine of this type installed in the UK at the time.
Mention was made of means of ‘black start’ systems for both stations and how a mechanism failure on the 33 KV switchgear caused a serious earth fault. This resulted in the loss of generation from both stations and caused a blackout of an area from Lancing to East Brighton and for about 15 miles inland.
The talk concluded with shots of the demolition of the brick and concrete chimneys.
R Parsons