TQ2677 : Lots Road Power Station – plumbing

This power station was then supplying a considerable amount of power to the London underground railway system. The power station was originally built between 1902 and 1905 and had four chimneys, later reduced to two. The plant that we saw in 1994 dated from a reconstruction from 1963 to 1969. This new plant consisted of six boilers and six turboalternators of 22-30 MW. This is the basement space alongside one of the turboalternator sets and shows a feed heater and plumbing that I think was for the steam jet air extractors that maintain the vacuum in the surface condensers. The big blue drum top left is the main alternator. In big machines like this the field rotates on the rotor and the main current is drawn off the stator. I think the stator voltage here was 33 kV.