Report - Inverkip Powerstation, Inverclyde - December 2011

[tweek]

Inverkip Powerstation, Inverclyde - December 2011

Visited with Dr Sick, sickbrain, Sick, Hiddensicko, Sickhouse, SickUK and sic

After a few too many Super Tennants, this is all I can remember from this trip...

1.
DerpStep music videos are actually not that fun and can become quite tedious especially at the top of a chimney in Scotland in December having long-since removed all the clothes that warmed you up so unbearably during your ascent.

2.
If you plan on sleeping in a location, don't visit with Dr Howser as his snoring can be heard from space and may hinder your chances of staying undetected - luckily for us Inverkip doesn't have security anymore.

3.
Sleeping bags are fit for purpose. Tin foil is not a suitable substitute.

4.
SNC Tours are atrocious employers, their sickness policy is unbelievable.

5.
fishbrain is not easily beaten.


History pinched from this good read

Inverkip power station is an oil-fired power station located on the eastern shore of the Firth of Clyde on the west coast of Scotland - between Inverkip and Wemyss Bay in Inverclyde.

The coastal location meant the station could draw its cooling water from the sea, obviating the need for the large parabolic towers normally associated with such installations. Resultantly, the most imposing feature of the station is its 778 foot (236 m) high chimney - the third tallest chimney in the UK, and Scotland's tallest freestanding structure.

Ostensibly composed as a concrete and glass facsimile of another famous oil-fired power station – Bankside, built thirty years earlier – Inverkip was completed in 1976. This crystalline cathedral for energy conversion was designed by Robert Matthew, the founder of RMJM (then Robert Matthew Johnson-Marshall), later the Scottish representative architects on the New Scottish Parliament buildings. Matthew was commissioned to undertake a series of Highland power stations - Lochay (1957-9) and Cashlie (1957-60), and others in the Lowlands, whereupon he began a series of much larger palaces of power for the South of Scotland Electricity Board (SSEB).

Kincardine (designed from 1954 and built 1958-60) signified a fundamental shift architecturally from traditionalist designs with its deconstruction of hierarchy. The control room was redeployed as a ‘straightforward piece of industrial design and finishing’, with more gravitas bestowed upon the utilitarian components. Upon being questioned by the SSEB’s chief engineer why he wanted drawings of the boilers, Matthew retorted: ‘if you want me to design an elephant house, I have to know what an elephant looks like.’

Kincardine was followed by a succession of RMJM commissions for power stations. The first, Longannet, opened in 1966. Its vast 2400 MW output expressed in the single-chimneyed solidity of its design foretold Cockenzie (1962-8) and ultimately Inverkip (1970-9).

The strict, no-nonsense, platonic purity deployed at these stations was perhaps foretold in the words of Michael Laird when describing Matthew’s seminal Edinburgh airport terminal with it’s ‘sharply cut rectangular shapes… vigour and restraint’ and ‘the chaste quality which permeates the building to the smallest detail…’.

Construction began on Inverkip, on what was to be Scotland's first oil-fired power station, in 1970. However, the soaring price of oil as a result of the oil crisis of 1973, with the price of a barrel of OPEC oil quadrupling by 1974, rendered operation of the station uneconomic.

Inverkip became Scotland's only oil fired power station.

It was therefore never utilised to anything near capacity with 1200MW being mothballed and the remaining capacity being used to satisfy peak demand. A notable exception was during the miners' strike of 1984/5 when low coal supplies prompted operation at capacity. In a calculated manouevre, Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher unleashed the station’s full potential in a political coup de grace against her trade-unionist adversary, Arthur Scargill - the ramifications of which are still felt today. Through realising the station’s maximum potential, she circumvented the striking coal-miners’ endeavours to deprive the area of energy. The triumphalism metaphorically displayed through the supercilious one-fingered salute of the smoking chimney. Power generation ceased in January 1988 when the plant was placed on ‘care and maintenance’, and classified as a strategic reserve – although it has never been used.

The four main flues were intended to serve the boilers for four steam generator sets; unfortunately only three were completed, before the fourth was cancelled. The main turbo-generator and many of the major components were interchangeable with the turbo-generators at Hunterston B around 13 miles south, on the Firth of Clyde.

The gargantuan glass-encased buildings, which conceal the intricate turbines and generators, are a scintillating sight in themselves - a big brother to Chipperfield’s BBC building up-river perhaps, albeit after a considerable course of anabolic steroids.

On entering, one can truly appreciate the formidable structures and machinery. Within the switchgear room - the main control centre of the titanic turbine and boiler rooms - one encounters vast panoply of switches, lights and knobs. A nerve-centre designed in a configuration more reminiscent of NASA mission control, or indeed, the machinations within the lair of a despotic Bond villain.

During construction it created some consternation in close-by Greenock, a few miles potentially downwind of the new station to the North East. The SSEB, at pains to convince people that the height of the chimney would spew any fumes well overhead of anyone in the town, purportedly devised a subterfuge with the promise of hydroponic cladding of the chimney. A vertical garden composed of ivy being planted at the top and bottom of the chimney - in the hope that both the encroaching flora on the building, and the local residents at odds with the company, would both eventually meet in the middle.

Thanks for viewing,

SNC Tours, proudly sponsored by...

 

[Sticking-it-to_"the_man"]

I'm planning on an extensive tour of Scotland, anyone know if this is still standing to add to the list?

 

[tweek]

Nope.

 

[little_ boy_explores]

Another cracking report Tweek... great pics with an extensive write up... looks like the chimney came down in 2013 which took 2yrs of planning... was 236 metres high, not as tall as the mast though at Emley Moor

 

[mookster]

I'm planning on an extensive tour of Scotland, anyone know if this is still standing to add to the list?

Long gone sadly.

 

[m9]

top thread resurrection, they don't make em like this anymore (reports or powerstations).

 

[Polominto73]

Sadly no more .if in this area try ravens Craig hospital before this is gone or balrossie house in kilmacolm