Power returns to Battersea Power Station

A milestone has been reached in a £42mn project to bring new electricity supplies into the heart of the Battersea Power Station development. Electricity tunnel boring machine ‘Maggie’ has completed the construction of a 320 m spur tunnel to carry essential electricity supplies to the £9bn development taking shape on the banks of the River Thames.

 The machine has now returned to the earth’s surface to make way for a junction chamber to be built. This will link the new tunnel to the wider, existing electricity tunnel network and electricity substations across other parts of London. A new electricity substation being built to provide power to Battersea Power Station will house two transformers to convert the power from 132 kV to 11 kV for distribution across the new neighbourhood.

New equipment at the substation will be connected to the development and the wider electricity network by two 132 kV electricity circuits running through the tunnel, with space for a third as capacity grows. It took miners 11 weeks to build the tunnel through London clay, some 20 m below ground. The new equipment is due to go live by the end of 2018.

Led by UK Power Networks, work to power the Battersea Power Station development has been jointly funded by the electricity company and the developer. Battersea Power Station stopped generating electricity in 1983 and the honour of restoring power supplies to the development sprouting up around London’s famous chimneys is not lost on the electrical engineers working on the electrical engineering project.

Photo: UK Power Networks