![]() State-owned CEGB, responsible for a significant portion of generation in England, Wales, and the South of Scotland, also oversaw the supergrid’s expansion through the 1960s and 1970s with new overhead 400-kV lines, underground cables, and substations connecting new power sources like nuclear and gas plants. A shining BEA priority was establishing a 275-kV “supergrid” network engineered to carry six times more power and easily accept future upgrades (Figure 1).Īs demand soared and the network grew, in 1958, the UK formed an Electricity Council to coordinate the whole industry and replaced a recent BEA-successor, the Central Electricity Authority, with the Central Electricity Generating Board (CEGB). In 1947, Britain moved to nationalize and expand its grid under the new British Electricity Authority (BEA). The Second World War, characterized by desperate fuel shortages, damaged power plants, and spates of electricity rationing, demonstrated the value of broader interconnection. It was the first of a series of new 275-kV lines. The first route energized was a 40-mile overhead line between Staythorpe and West Melton. With the push of a button on July 15, 1953, Britain’s “supergrid” went live. Construction of the 132-kV, 4,000-mile National Grid quickly followed under an eight-year program, but at the end of its completion, the system-which encapsulated seven individual grids-was still severely limited.ġ. While that kicked up myriad efforts to unify the system, Britain in 1926 solidified rationalization by establishing the Central Electricity Board (CEB), a public corporation tasked with building a “national gridiron” to link the most efficient stations. However, “During the First World War there was growing discontent with the disorganized, piecemeal, and uneconomic nature of electricity supply and distribution,” the historical society notes. Between 18, a series of private laws spurred the creation of 20 large power companies, and in 1909, in the wake of technical developments in generation and transmission, a law incentivized local authorities and broader companies to supply electricity in bulk. While the country’s first powerhouses mostly used steam engines, gas engines, and steam turbines to serve private houses or estates, they were quickly adapted to power street tramways and electric railways, and then to serve towns and cities.
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