A PIONEER POWER STATION

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume LXIV, 20 June 1931, Page 2

A PIONEER POWER STATION

Only 45 years have elapsed since "the : present generating station of Great Bri--1 tain” commenced the delivery of elec- ; tricity. Its establishment was described \ recently, in a lecture to the Newcomen Society, by Colonel H. E. B. Crompton, woh is now 86 years of ago. The installation was that owned by the Kensington Court Company, afterwards the Kensington and Kmghtsbridge Company, started by Colonel Crompton to supply electricity to the houses then being erectod on a site immediately south of Kensington High Street. Many private lighting plants had been erected in the early ’eighties for supplying individual houses, factories, buildings and theatres, but with the formation of the Kensington Court Company, however, a new chapter was opened by a house-to-house smpply of electricity. The charge for current was 8d a unit. The conductors consisted of bare copper strips, lin. wide and jin. thick, fixed to porcelain insulators in subways constructed in tho streets as the site was being developed. The supply of current was started in 1886, and sufficient houses were being supplied by the end of 1887 to warrant the payment of a dividend of 5 per cent, on the capital invested.