South Electricity Board Summary – British Electricity History

Table 9 shows various indicators of the growth of electrification from 1900. Of the 17 undertakings in that year only four were local authorities, a point that illustrates the importance of private companies in the region. The number of undertakings grew rapidly to 1925/26 and peaked a decade later. Power stations show a peak number in 1925/26 and gradual consolidation thereafter.

Table 9 Summary of Development in the Southern Area.

	Number of Undertakings¹	Local Authority *Undertakings*	Number of Power Stations	Generating Capacity (kW)	Per Capita Consumption (kWh)
1900	17	4	17	..	.. (4)²
1912	39	11	36	..	.. (36)
1925/6	59	15	32	95,510	44 (133)
1935/6	62	20	32	179,525	201 (374)
1948/9	..	..	26	435,683	601 (821)
1958/9	–	..	19	1,226,444	1,543 (1,765)³

Notes: ¹Excludes all non-statutory undertakings.
² Great Britain 1900-1948/9 from Leslie Hannah, Electricity Before Nationalisation: a study of the electricity supply industry in Britain to 1948 (London: Macmillan, 1979), pp.427-8.
³ Calculated from data in Electricity Council, Handbook of Electrical Supply Statistics 1977, p. 63 and census returns.

A sense of the rapid growth of demand from the mid-1920s is illustrated by the two final columns in the table. Economies of scale are reflected in the increasing size of power stations. The largest station in the region in 1925/26 at Southampton had an installed capacity of 18,760kW. A decade later the station had ben extended to 44,137kW and doubled again in 1937/38. No further growth took place in Southampton as the site was restricted by the growth of the new docks. Portsmouth took over as the largest station but was quickly overtaken by newer stations at Earley, Poole and Marchwood.

Per capita consumption in the Southern region (with Great Britain in parentheses) shows substantial rates of growth. Without large power-consuming industries, however, the region always lagged below national levels. Only Uxbridge (279.4kWh per capita) exceeded the national average in 1925/26 and a decade later only Heston & Isleworth (404kWh) and Oxford Electric (425kWh) were above the national average.

Electrification was a much slower process than the enthusiastic promoters of the 1880s expected. Much effort and expenditure were needed to create viable electricity undertakings in the larger urban centres. This point of viability was reached about 1900 but extending the benefits of electricity over wider areas took much longer and universal electricity was probably not achieved until the 1950s.

EARLEY POWER STATION

A wartime emergency station built alongside an existing grid substation on the outskirts of Reading. It was the only power station built and owned by the Central Electricity Board. The first turbine unit entered service in December 1942 and the full capacity of 120,000kW was completed in 1946.

Ordnance Survey, 1:25,000 series, Sheet SU 77, 1951 (National Library of Scotland).

[67] See Annual catalogues of British government publications 1920-1970 (Bishop’s Stortford: Chadwyck-Healey. 1974).
[68] The change of title from British Electricity Authority resulted from the formation of the autonomous South of Scotland Electricity Board from 1 April 1955.
[69] The SSE archive has 1,690 items including copes of the SEB house magazine from 1949 to 1988 and the annual reports from 1948/9 to 1997/8. The variety of other items such as Edmundson’s Monthly (1905-1912) suggests the rich potential of the stored material. A detailed history of Edmundson’s and Wessex Electricity is a project for a future researcher.

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