Britain: An official handbook > 1977

ENERGY AND NATURAL RESOURCES
Operations
Generation
265
tricity Board (SSEB)—generate, distribute and sell electricity. The boundary
separating their areas runs from Dumbarton on the Firth of Clyde to Newburgh
on the Firth of Tay. Each board comprises a chairman and between four and
eight members, one of whom is the chairman of the other board.
In Northern Ireland generation, transmission and distribution are carried
out by the Northern Ireland Electricity Service which came into operation
in 1973 as the result of the amalgamation of four former electricity under¬
takings. Power stations are located in Belfast, Ballylumford and Coolkeeragh.
In I975_7h the income of the electricity supply industry in England and
Wales was ^3>49h million and its profit after interest payments was ^8-5
million. In Scotland the income of the SSEB and the NSHEB was £291
million and j£io6 million respectively and their profits were ^2‘7 million and
^o-i million. In 1974-75 the Northern Ireland Electricity Service’s income
totalled ^69 million and it made a net loss of ^28‘7 million. Annual capital
investment amounts to ^640 million in England and Wales, £140 million in
Scotland and ^68 million in Northern Ireland. The statutory limit to
borrowings by the industryinEnglandand Wales is ^6,500 million, in Northern
Ireland £650 million and in Scotland £1,200 million; the Government pro¬
poses to raise the limit in Scotland to .£1,500 million, with provision for a
further increase up to £1,950 million.
Generation for the public supply in Britain reached 251,300 gigawatt hours1
(GWh) in 1975; conventional steam power stations provided 88 per cent of
the total and nuclear and hydro-electric stations about 10 per cent and 2 per
cent respectively. A high rate of expansion of output was a feature of the
industry in its earliest years, but the rate has slackened recently and the total
of electricity generated in 1975 was about the same as in 1974. Consequently
a number of old power stations, mainly small coal-fired plant no longer
required to generate electricity, have been, or are due to be, closed; the
CEGB is to close 48 small power stations or parts of stations between October
1976 and March 1977. Forecasts of future demand for electricity have been
reduced and as a result the CEGB will not need to order conventional
stations before 1978- Public supply power stations in Britain consumed 109
million tons of coal equivalent in 1975, of which coal accounted for 67 per cent
and oil 19 per cent.
The output capacity of the generating stations of the electricity boards in
Britain at the end of 1975 totalled 68,555 megawatts (MW). Between 1970
and 1975 over 17,400 MW of output capacity was commissioned in England
and Wales, including 681 MW in I975> bringing total output capacity to
59,011 MW. The SSEB’s total output capacity is over 6,000 MW and the
NSHEB’s total installed capacity is about 2,150 MW. In Northern Ireland
total generating capacity was 1,905 MW in 1975 of which some 1,425 MW
was installed in oil-fired stations and the remainder in coal-fired stations.
Generation of electricity outside the public supply system is relatively small—
20,878 GWh in 1975. The major sources outside the fuel industries are the
chemical, engineering, paper, and iron and steel industries and the nuclear
power plants controlled by Atomic Energy Authority or by British Nuclear
Fuels Ltd.
An analysis of electricity generation by the public supply system in Great
Britain is given in Table 20.
1 One gigawatt hour = 1,000 megawatt hours = one million kilowatt hours.