Huncoat Power Station was located in

Huncoat Huncoat is a village in Lancashire, England; situated in the North West England, North West. It is located to the east of Accrington. It is a ward of Hyndburn where the population taken at the United Kingdom Census 2011, 2011 census was 4,418. ...

near

Accrington Accrington is a town in the Hyndburn borough of Lancashire, England. It lies about east of Blackburn, west of Burnley, east of Preston, north of Manchester and is situated on the culverted River Hyndburn. Commonly abbreviated by locals to ...

, Lancashire. It was a 150 MW, coal-fired, electricity generating station in operation from 1952 to 1984. It has since been demolished. Huncoat power station replaced the earlier Accrington power station that had supplied electricity to the town since 1900.

History

Huncoat Power Station was planned by Accrington Corporation in 1946. The Accrington Corporation Electricity Committee appointed Mr H. Clarke to advise the corporation on the design, construction and commissioning of the £5 million new station for a fee of £125,000. He was to pay the Borough Electrical Engineer £15,000, and £11,000 to other officers and members of staff and £9,000 to special staff appointed by the corporation. These arrangements were approved by the

Central Electricity Board The United Kingdom Central Electricity Board (CEB) was established by the Electricity (Supply) Act 1926. It had the duty to supply electricity to authorised electricity undertakers, to determine which power stations would be 'selected' stations ...

. Plans were drawn up and the development was authorised by the

Minister of Fuel and Power The Ministry of Power was a United Kingdom government ministry dealing with issues concerning energy. The Ministry of Power (then named Ministry of Fuel and Power) was created on 11 June 1942 from functions separated from the Board of Trade. ...

Hugh Gaitskell Hugh Todd Naylor Gaitskell (9 April 1906 – 18 January 1963) was a British politician who was Leader of the Labour Party (UK), Leader of the Labour Party and Leader of the Opposition (United Kingdom), Leader of the Opposition from 1955 until ...

, in late 1947 following a public inquiry held in August 1947. The station was located to utilise coal from the neighbouring Huncoat Colliery and the wider

Burnley Coalfield The Burnley Coalfield is the most northerly portion of the Lancashire Coalfield. Surrounding Burnley, Nelson, Lancashire, Nelson, Blackburn and Accrington, it is separated from the larger southern part by an area of Millstone Grit that forms the ...

. The station was 2.5 miles north-east of Accrington. The power station was designed by the architect Robert Norman MacKellar (1890–1973). The first sod for the power station was dug by the Mayor of Accrington on 31 January 1948. Following nationalisation of the electricity industry from 1 April 1948 ownership of the power station was vested in the

British Electricity Authority The British Electricity Authority (BEA) was established as the central British electricity authority in 1948 under the nationalisation of Great Britain's electricity supply industry enacted by the Electricity Act 1947. The BEA was responsible for ...

(BEA) which continued construction of the power station, and which first became operational in 1952. Following reorganisations in the British electricity industry ownership of the power station devolved on 1 April 1955 to the

Central Electricity Authority The Central Electricity Authority (CEA) was a body that managed and operated the electricity supply industry in England and Wales between 1 April 1955 and 31 December 1957. The CEA replaced the earlier British Electricity Authority (BEA) as a res ...

(CEA), then to the

Central Electricity Generating Board The Central Electricity Generating Board (CEGB) was responsible for electricity generation, transmission and bulk sales in England and Wales from 1958 until privatisation of the electricity industry in the 1990s. It was established on 1 Januar ...

(GEGB) from 1 January 1958.

Station layout

The main buildings of the power station were constructed on a south-west to north-east axis. The boiler house and the two chimneys were to the north-west and successively to the south-east were the turbine house, the control room, switch house, and grid

switchgear In an electric power system, a switchgear is composed of electrical disconnect switches, fuses or circuit breakers used to control, protect and isolate electrical equipment. Switchgear is used both to de-energize equipment to allow work to ...

. An administrative block was to the south-west of the main buildings. The two

cooling tower A cooling tower is a device that rejects waste heat to the atmosphere through the cooling of a coolant stream, usually a water stream, to a lower temperature. Cooling towers may either use the evaporation of water to remove heat and cool the ...

s were east of the main building and the coal store, including a screening and crushing house, was to the north-east of the site. There was also a water treatment plant, a water settling tank and an ash sump. The power station initially received coal from the nearby Huncoat Colliery via a half-mile railway line and sidings. These were on the north side of the railway line and transported coal to the station by an overhead conveyor enclosed in a concrete duct. The colliery was closed in 1968 as uneconomic, after which the power station received coal by railway from the wider area.

Specification

The principal plant at the power station comprised: * Five Simon-Carves 305,000 lb/hr (38.4 kg/s) of

steam Steam is water vapor, often mixed with air or an aerosol of liquid water droplets. This may occur due to evaporation or due to boiling, where heat is applied until water reaches the enthalpy of vaporization. Saturated or superheated steam is inv ...

, pulverised fuel boilers, operating at 625

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at 860 °F (43.1

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at 460 °C). The total evaporative capacity of the boilers was 1,525,000 lb/hr (192 kg/s) of steam. * Five Fraser & Chalmers- G.E.C. 32 MW, 11 kV, 3,000 rpm, air-cooled, 2 cylinder impulse, turbo-alternators. Each alternator set had a 40.5 MVA step up

transformer In electrical engineering, a transformer is a passive component that transfers electrical energy from one electrical circuit to another circuit, or multiple Electrical network, circuits. A varying current in any coil of the transformer produces ...

to 33 kV. * The steam condensers worked under a

vacuum A vacuum (: vacuums or vacua) is space devoid of matter. The word is derived from the Latin adjective (neuter ) meaning "vacant" or "void". An approximation to such vacuum is a region with a gaseous pressure much less than atmospheric pressur ...

of 28.3 inches of mercury (719 mm Hg). There were two reinforced concrete, hyperbolic cooling towers, designed by Film Cooling Towers (1925) Limited. Each tower was rated at 3 million gallons per hour (3.79 m³/s). Make up water was abstracted from the Leeds–Liverpool Canal, north of the power station.

Operations

The first generating set was commissioned in June 1952, the second in December 1952, followed by the other sets in September 1955, 1956 and fifth and final set in September 1957. Operating data for the station over its operating life was as follows: The electricity supplied by Huncoat power station, in GWh, is shown in the graph.

Closure

The station was closed by the

in 1984. The cooling towers were demolished on 16 October 1988, and the two chimneys and the main buildings were demolished in September 1990. The 132 kV grid sub-station to the south of the power station site is still operational. Following the demolition of the main buildings, the administration block remained and was visited and visually recorded by several commentators as an example of derelict

industrial archaeology Industrial archaeology (IA) is the systematic study of material evidence associated with the Industry (manufacturing), industrial past. This evidence, collectively referred to as industrial heritage, includes buildings, machinery, artifacts, si ...

References