Report - Grain-A and Tilbury B Powerstations - 2014.

[Ojay]

Grain-A and Tilbury B Powerstations

Not much of a thread this I'm afraid mainly due to bone idleness on my behalf

Grain was another first off the LCPD bingo list, and fb & Co had already bagged Tilbury B

@fb I'm still chuckling at..

"Made a terrible mistake accessing this one and ended up in a 400kv substation"


Looking back I regret not fetching the dslr out on some of the stations we managed to poke about in

I'd figured it was best to pack light in case we ended up having to leave sharpish, even though Keitei/GAJ & Dicky lugged more gear round than a leading branch of Jessops

I'm sure someone will be along to tell me the pics are crooked & blurry again, well yes they are as the sole focus wasn't the pics as far as I was concerned anyway

The ones I've manage to salvage from the GoPro are dire and in no way reflect what's on offer at these 2 sites despite us having a proper poke about

Luckily GAJ had the selfie stick on standby..

Meanwhile, the following bunch of shitty pics will have to suffice,
as it's took me well over a year just to sort through these


Grain-A

Opened in 1979 and was closed in 2012 due to not being economically viable

The two remaining generating units were mothballed and the station hasn't generated electricity since, other than a brief period where it was used as a backup to stick juice into the grid during peak demands

In it's day, it was capable of producing 2% of the UK's power requirements

It's been replaced by a 1,275MW gas-fired combined heat and power station next door at the cost of £500m

Demo work started in April 2014 and I've not been back since to see where they are up to, but I imagine this once oil fired giant won't be around much longer

Tilbury B

Began operation in 1967 until 2011, it operated as a coal fired power station with the capacity to generate 1,131MW of electricity for the National Grid

The plant was converted to run on biomass and was re-opened in 2012 as it wound down it's remaining 8,000 LCPD hours

Finally closing in August 2013, having generated its final unit of electricity the government refused to award it a subsidy to switch from coal to biomass and has lay dormant since

The only firm plan I've read about is to demolish the existing site and replace it with a proposed 2000MW CCGT and 400MW open cycle gas turbine Tilbury C plant

 

[clebby]

Smashing.

Grain's the only other one I care about tbh, other than Ironbridge when it finally closes. Fingers crossed there's still something to see in there...

 

[GAJ]

Can't say I brought a lot of gear to any of these, I certainly didn't have a tripod looking at the 5 or so super high ISO shots I've got of both places

2 funny nights out, all told, & I'm pretty sure we did these in the same week which rendered me a zombie at work. In fact, Tilbury still tops my list of 'How the fuck did we get away with that?!' experiences. We were ascending one of the open staircases in the boiler house & had just got to the first 180° turnaround (approx 14 steps) when we heard voices & saw 2 workers heading our way checking various things. Dicky & Keitei were half up the next set of stairs but Ojay & myself were stood in full view on the landing. Ojay tried to hide behind a post, which was obviously not going to happen & that cracked me up so I was now trying to stop laughing at the absurdity. To his credit, he kept filming on the gopro as they got closer & closer. They checked a few things & then started walking towards the staircase we were stood on & we hoped they would carry on past it. It looked like they would, but then one of them grabbed the handrail & turned to have a chat with the other, who also grabbed the other handrail. That left me stood in direct view at the top of these stairs, masked up like you see in the selfies & all it would take was one of them to look up & see me. The others may have been OK so I was just gonna head towards them if they saw me so the others could make a break for it & hope for the best. They chatted for only a few seconds, by which point I could smell one of them distinctly as they can't have been much more than 10ft away, & then they turned to walk away from the stairs. We didn't hang around & got as high as we could in a bit of disbelief at what just happened. Once Ojay sorts the vids out, you'll see just how close this was to disaster, but sometimes that's just what you need to keep things interesting. Not sure I'd have said that had I been gripped masked up like I was gonna blow the place up, but that didn't happen, & I seriously hope it doesn't happen to anyone who ever attempts these places in the future.

A top night indeed

 

[Ojay]

@GAJ 3 close shaves at Tilbury B, all good fun and yes one day I'll sort through all this video, if not I'll just hand the lot over to someone else