Fawley Power Station, Southampton, January 2017
Introduction:
Visited with @AndyK
Here's one from the archives, I feel like it's probably about time I covered another CEGB station, it would have been a start up on Eggborough but we've seen way too much of that one recently so here's a change. It's hard to believe that this station has had its turbine hall completely removed and that it's been 2 years since Andy and I visited here, only feels like the other day to me!
I'm pretty gutted that I only made the effort to visit here once, I mean I was quite lucky to see everything I wanted to see within one trip but I usually like to make comprehensive reports on these stations, Rugeley B though I think most was pulled off in one effort. She really is High on my list of visited stations though, the place is beautifully designed and built, the glass turbine hall, boiler house and flying soucer looking control room where epic. In fact I'd say Alongside Eggborough and Ferrybridge 'C', Fawley is in the top 3 of so far finest examples of control rooms we've found in modern stations. I'd love to make another visit, not necessarily for more photos but just to take in the awesomeness again, sadly though the place is now empty of turbines.
Fawley seen across the Solent back in 2012, still an operational station
History:
Fawley Power Station is perfect for me personally, she was built during the late 1960's coming into operation in 1971, that perfect point in time when stations were getting bigger but still carrying the quality and character of the older ones. As you can see in the picture above she was built mostly out of steel and glass, with a bit of the UFO control room seen attached in the mid left of the image. The station is armed with four 500MW units built by Parsons making her a 2000MW beast, alongside this the addition of four Rolls Royce Gas Turbines connected to four 17.5MW Richardson Westgarth Generators, if you look on the boiler house roof (in the above photo) you can see the four short metal exhausts for the Gas Turbines. Boilers for the four Parsons units consisted of four John Thompson Ltd oil fired machines.
Plant Details
The station operated in later times when the grid was low on electricity, her oil fired boilers being somewhat faster than coal ones to come into steam, unfortunately due to a lack of work units 1, 2 & 4 where taken out of service. Unit 2 was the first unit to be decommissioned in 1992, followed by unit 4 in 1994, unit 1 however was mothballed rather than decommissioned in 1995 and was remade operational in 2006 returning the station from a single 500MW unit station back to a 1000MW one. Pretty crazy the station was operating for 11 years on just a quarter of her potential electricity generation. On the 31st of March 2013, generation seized and the station closed, the interesting thing is that since 2013 right up to about mid 2017 the station simply sat out of use, featuring in a few movies and becoming a store room for some things unexpected to see in a turbine hall, mainly boats but we did see an aeroplane in there too! The control room however was in use, in control of Cowes power station. Demolition begins in 2018, the turbine hall now empty and void.
Fawley PS Cross Section
Fawley preconstruction model
Turbine Hall & Boiler:
Right lets get started then, unfortunately I didn't get much captured in the boiler house, although having a good walk around there time was running out. It's a bit of a laugh actually my experience of Fawley, I mean well had a hell of a successful afternoon and evening but the morning turned into a disaster... Having entering the turbine hall and setting up to take the first few images of the day, the decommissioning team arrive and begin work... We ended up hiding and making our way up to the gas turbines.
Rolls Royce Olympus Gas Turbines & Richardson Westgarth 17.5MW Generators
Unit 2's John Thompson Ltd Oil Fired Boiler
Unit 2's Boiler Gauges
Finally the station drops into silence, so it's time to come out of the darkness and hit that Turbine Hall.
Pretty rare to see many of these surviving after closure!
Underneath we have the usual stuff, Boiler Feed Pumps, CW Pumps etc
Admin & Control Room
Loosing the morning and spending the afternoon hitting the Turbine Hall the next move was to take a look at the Admin and Control Room, however light was dropping severely fast at this point, fortunately for us the lights had been left on and we still had a good chance to see what was going on inside that UFO parked up outside...
Analogue beauty, no shitey smart boards running this station, was the really sad part about Ironbridge...
4000KV & Water/Cable Tunnels Panels
Mimic Tiled control panel, first time I've seen one of these at Fawley.
Station Boards and GT controls.
We did have another good walk around admin, but we'd lost the light sadly... I saw the Bath House, labs the lot but we had now way of using lights with the windows of the UFO and security outside, fortunately the Projection Room had working lights though and the model of a potential Fawley 'B' in the entrance area.
Some interesting looking tapes still in the projection rooms too, sadly no projectors though!
And the model of Fawley 'B' a CEGB plan just before privatisation for a Coal powered Fawley 'B', it never happened though...
Absolutely loved Fawley, one of my favourites so far that being said though, I don't think I've had a bad station yet to be fair.
Cheers for reading,
TAW
Introduction:
Visited with @AndyK
Here's one from the archives, I feel like it's probably about time I covered another CEGB station, it would have been a start up on Eggborough but we've seen way too much of that one recently so here's a change. It's hard to believe that this station has had its turbine hall completely removed and that it's been 2 years since Andy and I visited here, only feels like the other day to me!
I'm pretty gutted that I only made the effort to visit here once, I mean I was quite lucky to see everything I wanted to see within one trip but I usually like to make comprehensive reports on these stations, Rugeley B though I think most was pulled off in one effort. She really is High on my list of visited stations though, the place is beautifully designed and built, the glass turbine hall, boiler house and flying soucer looking control room where epic. In fact I'd say Alongside Eggborough and Ferrybridge 'C', Fawley is in the top 3 of so far finest examples of control rooms we've found in modern stations. I'd love to make another visit, not necessarily for more photos but just to take in the awesomeness again, sadly though the place is now empty of turbines.
Fawley seen across the Solent back in 2012, still an operational station
History:
Fawley Power Station is perfect for me personally, she was built during the late 1960's coming into operation in 1971, that perfect point in time when stations were getting bigger but still carrying the quality and character of the older ones. As you can see in the picture above she was built mostly out of steel and glass, with a bit of the UFO control room seen attached in the mid left of the image. The station is armed with four 500MW units built by Parsons making her a 2000MW beast, alongside this the addition of four Rolls Royce Gas Turbines connected to four 17.5MW Richardson Westgarth Generators, if you look on the boiler house roof (in the above photo) you can see the four short metal exhausts for the Gas Turbines. Boilers for the four Parsons units consisted of four John Thompson Ltd oil fired machines.
Plant Details
The station operated in later times when the grid was low on electricity, her oil fired boilers being somewhat faster than coal ones to come into steam, unfortunately due to a lack of work units 1, 2 & 4 where taken out of service. Unit 2 was the first unit to be decommissioned in 1992, followed by unit 4 in 1994, unit 1 however was mothballed rather than decommissioned in 1995 and was remade operational in 2006 returning the station from a single 500MW unit station back to a 1000MW one. Pretty crazy the station was operating for 11 years on just a quarter of her potential electricity generation. On the 31st of March 2013, generation seized and the station closed, the interesting thing is that since 2013 right up to about mid 2017 the station simply sat out of use, featuring in a few movies and becoming a store room for some things unexpected to see in a turbine hall, mainly boats but we did see an aeroplane in there too! The control room however was in use, in control of Cowes power station. Demolition begins in 2018, the turbine hall now empty and void.
Fawley PS Cross Section
Fawley preconstruction model
Turbine Hall & Boiler:
Right lets get started then, unfortunately I didn't get much captured in the boiler house, although having a good walk around there time was running out. It's a bit of a laugh actually my experience of Fawley, I mean well had a hell of a successful afternoon and evening but the morning turned into a disaster... Having entering the turbine hall and setting up to take the first few images of the day, the decommissioning team arrive and begin work... We ended up hiding and making our way up to the gas turbines.
Rolls Royce Olympus Gas Turbines & Richardson Westgarth 17.5MW Generators
Unit 2's John Thompson Ltd Oil Fired Boiler
Unit 2's Boiler Gauges
Finally the station drops into silence, so it's time to come out of the darkness and hit that Turbine Hall.
Pretty rare to see many of these surviving after closure!
Underneath we have the usual stuff, Boiler Feed Pumps, CW Pumps etc
Admin & Control Room
Loosing the morning and spending the afternoon hitting the Turbine Hall the next move was to take a look at the Admin and Control Room, however light was dropping severely fast at this point, fortunately for us the lights had been left on and we still had a good chance to see what was going on inside that UFO parked up outside...
Analogue beauty, no shitey smart boards running this station, was the really sad part about Ironbridge...
4000KV & Water/Cable Tunnels Panels
Mimic Tiled control panel, first time I've seen one of these at Fawley.
Station Boards and GT controls.
We did have another good walk around admin, but we'd lost the light sadly... I saw the Bath House, labs the lot but we had now way of using lights with the windows of the UFO and security outside, fortunately the Projection Room had working lights though and the model of a potential Fawley 'B' in the entrance area.
Some interesting looking tapes still in the projection rooms too, sadly no projectors though!
And the model of Fawley 'B' a CEGB plan just before privatisation for a Coal powered Fawley 'B', it never happened though...
Absolutely loved Fawley, one of my favourites so far that being said though, I don't think I've had a bad station yet to be fair.
Cheers for reading,
TAW
