Inverkip power station, built in 1970, is a classic white elephant – by the time of the 1973 oil crisis, the idea of an oil-fired power station was looking slightly daft, and the station only briefly reached it’s full 1900MW capacity during the miner’s strikes of 1984/85. The station was mothballed in 1988.
Oddly, the power station itself and the woods around it are still classed as greenbelt, however there are plans to demolish the power station in 2009, to replace it with housing.
After a brief look about outside in the rain…
…I headed inside to dry off and explore. This is one of three main boilers:
Lots of big tanks, and steam pipes run everywhere.
I climbed up higher – note the small Scottish Power van:
A bunch of chart recorders:
Onto the roof of the main building, to look up at the enormous chimney.
Back inside and even higher.
A pressure vessel of some kind:
And some very elderly litter:
A panorama of the entire level:
All the way down to the floor of the turbine hall:
Lots of neatly-labeled storage vessels:
A panorama of one huge turbine and generator, with giant overhead cranes:
One of the absolutely enormous fans:
And I didn’t go past this sign…
All images:
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