Tilbury Power Station
1947 Tilbury 'A' Power Station was a coal-fired 360 MW power station, first planned by the County of London Electric Supply Co Ltd.
Civil Consulting Engineers and Architects were Sir Alexander Gibb and Partners; the main consulting engineers were Merz and McLellan. The functional layout is similar to that used in many power stations throughout the 20th century, with the boilers and related plant located in a long rectangular building, attached to one side of which is the parallel turbine hall. The site has been laid out to face the Thames, with the offices and control rooms in a roughly symmetrical range around a quadrangle attached to the south end of the much larger boiler house-turbine house block. Structural steel work was by Alexander Findlay and Co of Motherwell[1] with boilers by John Thompson Water Tube Boilers Ltd. of Wolverhampton[2] and three 60,000-kW turbo-alternators by English Electric Co [3]and and three by C. A. Parsons and Co.
1956 Opening of Tilbury "A" for the Central Electricity Authority
1958 Tilbury 'A' was completed. Soon after completion the station was adapted to also burn oil.
1961 Construction started of Tilbury 'B', a coal-fired power station, for the CEGB. It dwarfed the earlier station. It was built specifically to supply the 275kV National grid system. There is also a direct 400kV connection with Kingsnorth Power Station via a tunnel beneath the Thames.
The station was built on the site of the former coal store to the east of the original station, which was always intended to be used for the construction of a second power station. When built, Tilbury "B" was cited as a prototype of the forthcoming generation of 2,000 MW power stations. Architecturally, it is of similar functional design to other power stations of the period such as Kingsnorth, with no fenestration to the main buildings. The overall layout of buildings is similar to that of the 'A' station, with the taller boiler house block orientated north-south to the west of the adjoining turbine hail, and with offices and control rooms at the south end.
1969 Tilbury 'B' was completed.
1981 Closure of Tilbury "A"
1990 Two 800-tonne coal unloaders were installed on the jetty.