On the opposite side of the Road from Inverkip power station there are two large box type Vents around fifty yards apart at on the verge of the Main Road(grid Ref NS 199 709).
I would assume tht these are connected with the underground resorvoir as mentioned in the SESCO main site detail of the above mothballed facilty.If these vents are indeed connected to the plants resorvoir then why two then agian why have vents for such a short connection.Any takers.Oh and incidentally cannot see the vents on the OS map for the area.

I would guess because it's an emergency reservoir, they've planned for a higher surge than a normal reservoir would have.

greenock - kif you are referring to the concrete water tank it is quite a bit higher up the hill than the vented buildings and cannot be associated with it.    For some reason I have it in the back of my mind that they might be local substations.

You may notice there are no pylons between the power station and the sub station further up the hill. The two vents are access to the main bus bars/cables which carry the electrical supply from the station to the sub station. If my memory serves me correctly the electricity is generated at 23 kV stepped down  and supplied to the sub station where it is converted to 500 Kv for distrubution through the national grid. The pipes from the fresh water holding tank may also come through the same access tunnels of this i'm not sure but would doubt this cause water and electricty don't realllly mix that well. Worked at Inverkip from 1976 till 1985 have been in the tank and the access tunnel.

Thanks TankCore!

Is there anything else you could add to our page on Inverkip Power Station?

The concrete holding tank was full of fresh water. Supplied at that time by the water board another public utility before nationalisation. The tank was not intended to supply the station with drinking water etc this was supplied through the normal mains water supply which would go to any commercial or domestic premises. The tank was a supply of water to support the three main boilers and three auxilluary boilers. To fill from empty or top up. The water was fully treated in the water treatment plant(situated between turbines 2 and 3) before use. This involved filtering and treating with chemicals before being used in the boilers(basicaly a DI plant). All very strictly controlled and monitored by chemists. When the tank was first filled with water cracks appeared in the concrete causing great concern to the contractor NPG and the SSEB. The tank was reinforced and the max level dropped(somebody maybe got the numbers wrong). Keep in mind the capacity of water contained in each of the boilers was enoromous(use that term cause i forget the numbers). To give you an example. The boilers are not constructed from the floor up they are suspended from the roof of the boiler house(the large buildings nearer the river). When they are filled with water they drop 24 inches due to additional weight of water thermal expansion etc. A fatality occurred during hydraulic testing of one of the boilers(think it may have been Unit 1). After hydraulic testing the boiler was being drained of water. A fitter was sent to remove an access door from the main steam drum which under normal circumstances would have a pressure behind it of 180 BAR when the boiler was in service. The doors are desinged in such a way that the pressure inside the vessel assists in the sealing from inside out rather than outside in(hope that makes sense). In this situation the reverse happened and an enormous vacuum was created due to the draining operation. The fitter removed the two holding dogs and hit the door with a hammer to break the seal. When the seal was broken it sucked him inside trapping his shoulder and upper torso. On site emergency services were called but the fitter died at the scene. Think he was employed by Clarke Chapman part of NPG at the time. A tragedy at the time felt by everyone. One of only two fatalities during the construction of the site. Hope this is of interest to you all. If you have any specific questions i will do my best to answer.

Another note the fifth flue in the chimney is not for emergency generators it's for the auxilluary boilers. Used for trace heating,oil pre-heating and general running of the station.

Thanks very much tankcore and welcome.

Ouch, that'd be a bad way to go. I guess it explains the warning signs:



I didn't know that the boilers were suspended, but it makes sense - there aren't massive supports on the ground floor for them. I thought they were suspended on the boiler level, though.

That notice brings back memories. Boiler level starts very near the roof of the building. There are basically 4 levels within the station 18m level 25m level 35m level 50m level all accessed by a very convenient lift. Only for personnel and lighter equipment. To accomodate the lift of heavier equipment there are hoist wells with electric winches. Boiler level starts at 50m plus in fact very near the roof of the building. The picture you have posted is situated on the 50m level near the steam drum access door where the chap was killed. The boiler is suspended above this level 55m plus. You may notice the CC Ltd in the bottom left of the picture. The notice was posted by Clarke Chapman Ltd.Very surprised it is still there all these years later. Used to float safety valves at 55m level noise was unbearable superheated steam at 180 BAR and temp 500c quite exciting.

Sounds fun There were several of those signs, on each of the steam drum doors - some of the doors had big locking bars over the dogs, I presume this was an extra safety feature.

The one bit I've never been able to find is the tunnel where the HV cables led to the substation. Is there even a tunnel, or are they just buried cables?

I have been down the  access door from the vent side. I can't remember exaclty whats down there but the fact there is access tells you there is equipment down there otherwise why the access. There may be cable joints monitoring equipment down there. As for accees from the power station to the to the substation i think this is unlikely(never heard of it in my time there). Note of caution!!! A power station not only produces electricty it consumes it in vast amounts approx 30MW plus.. In order to get one unit on load there are countless pumps,valves,electric motors,pre-heaters in use etc before the station starts producing electricity. The cables in question are probably live i would not recommend any unauthorised intrusion into this area. It's more dangerous than the staion itself. If there is a fault on any of the cables you won't need to find the fault it will find you with deadly results.

Oh absolutely, it's also probably one of the least interesting parts of the power station - I was just curious for completeness

There's a live substation between boilers 2 and 3 on the water side - that'll connect to it somewhere.

I've finished my book on the Scottish explosives factories - a book on Inverkip is in the works...

I have been down the  access door from the vent side. I can't remember exaclty whats down there but the fact there is access tells you there is equipment down there otherwise why the access. There may be cable joints monitoring equipment down there. As for accees from the power station to the to the substation i think this is unlikely(never heard of it in my time there). Note of caution!!! A power station not only produces electricty it consumes it in vast amounts approx 30MW plus.. In order to get one unit on load there are countless pumps,valves,electric motors,pre-heaters in use etc before the station starts producing electricity. The cables in question are probably live i would not recommend any unauthorised intrusion into this area. It's more dangerous than the staion itself. If there is a fault on any of the cables you won't need to find the fault it will find you with deadly results.

Taken in 2007:

A78 at Inverkip Power Station:: OS grid NS1971 :: Geograph British Isles - photograph every grid square!

Presumably the fact that there are two of these relates to the 2 lines of pylons running acroos  the hill above the station.

The thing about the flues puzzles me - I don't remember there being a fifth flue, and there definitely isn't one in the middle:



The access hatch to the roof of the chimney is right in the middle as well, so it's not possible that it was removed - is it possible that it fed into one of the four main flues instead?

The fifth flue can be seen clearly in the aerial views, but the description is difficult to pass in a few words (oddly enough, I'm looking at better phrasing at the moment as there is a revised page in hiding pending completion.)

Although it is indeed centrally mounted, it is not in the geometric centre of the stack, but is located on the circumference, between two of the main boiler flues - if that makes more sense

So it is! That's embarassing - I must have walked with past it several times, but never realised that there were five stacks, not four.

The other interesting thing from the aerial is that the 4th,unused flue appears to be capped off.

There are five flues in the chimney. They are clearly visible on Google Earth. The capped off flue was for boiler 4 planned but never constructed. The other three larger flues were for boilers 1,2,3 which were operational. The smaller flue was for the auxilluary boilers. The auxilluary boiler house is situated at the base of the chimney on the landward side.Although these boilers were smaller they were still a coniderable size maybe the size of a large detached house. All the boilers in Inverkip were fired from cold on propane gas. The gas storage tanks are visible again on Google earth to the seaward side of the chimney for obvious reasons BOOM. The main boilers then switched to heavy oil when the furnace temperature had reached the correct temperature. The auxiluary boilers ran on Diesel. Each of the main flues are lined with individual fire bricks. The chimney had to be flailed every year(dependant on service). This involved building a scaffold at the top of the flue and placing a beam across. A cable was then passed down through the centre of the flue with a weight and chains attached. A motor spun the cable and centrifugal force made the ends of the chains contact the lining of the chimney the cable was hoisted as it spun to the chimney top. After this had been carried out an SSEB engineer had to inspect the inside of the chimney to make sure no damage had been caused. This involved being hoisted up the inside of the chimney in an open top cage(bucket as it was called) this was done with one of the steeplejacks in attendance. Not a popular job. Funny story ! It took some considerable time to ascend from the base of the chimney to the top in a bucket. After completion of one of these inspections the bucket arrived under the beam at the top of the chimney. The steeplejack hoisted himself up onto the beam using the cable for assistance and offered his hand to the engineer to take the same route. Taking the stairs took a fraction of the time it did to descend in the bucket. The engineer flatly refused and insisted on descending in the bucket (any non trained steeplejack would). So off they went back down the chimney in the bucket. Another point may be of interest. The steeplejack companyy who carried out this very dangerous and skilled task were based in Fife they had the contract for all of Scotland. The foreman(who i had worked with at Inverkip) was killed later that year at Peterhead Power Station.

There is reference in the attached link.

http://oneguyfrombarlick.co.uk.....k%26%2339%3Bs+corner[mail][/mail]

Interesting information TankCore.   I am sure many of us had no idea of the scale of the plant involved nor of the complexity of lighting the boilers.  I had rather assumed that they would be started by spraying the oil over a heated electriic element.

Agreed, that's a lot mroe complex than I naively thought it would be. It explains why there was such a massive stack of manuals in the control room

Can you confirm that the three things in the smaller annex to the south are backup diesel generators? These things:

Yes they are the emergency generators. If my memory serves me correctly there are three of them. There are three of everything point being one in service,one in standby,one out for maintenance. Manufacutred by British Polar. All prime movers and main equipment are coloured to match the equipment associated with the main boilers and turbines. Green Unit 1 Blue Unit 2 Orange Unit 3. If my memory serves me correctly.

All three of these are green, but the turbines are definitely colour-coded...

Quoted from TankCore

The foreman(who i had worked with at Inverkip) was killed later that year at Peterhead Power Station.

Was that the fatality that took place at the top of Peterhead's chimney some years ago?

(Peterhead was more fortunate than Inverkip, originally planned to use North Sea oil, price rises meant in a change to gas, piped directly from the Brent Field, which would otherwise have been flared off as waste because the Mossmorran processing plant was still to be built then - 1980 -and by 1984, oil became economic again. It has also been upgraded on numerous occasions, and is now very efficient (reported at 57% versus a typical 37%), but plans to run it on hydrogen and install carbon capture were dropped a couple of years ago, as the government then failed to make any serious commitments).

I was working up there at the time (no, not at the power station, in the town) and used to go touring the area in my down time.

Work was in progress at the top of the chimney, and one of the workers was killed in an accident. Unfortunately, the weather closed in at the same time, and it was not possible to recover his body for some days. I had already been along the road and shot some pics, and also viewed the workers by binoculars (before the mist rolled in), and had been impressed by how small they were in comparison to the top of the stack, 183 metres high.

Just after the accident, it was no longer possible even to see most of the chimney above the station, let alone the top, so no-one could even attempt recovery or investigation, and there were many onlookers to be seen at the roadside as I drove to and from the town each day. It was also reported in all the local news reports until the weather cleared and the body could be recovered safely.

Not sure of the year when the accident at Peterhead happened. But i would have thought late seventies early eighties. When working at Inverkip the steeplejacks used to go to the Wemyss Bay Hotel(stable bar) at lunch time for a few pints and spot of lunch. On returning to the station a senior SSEB engineer approached them with his H &SE hat on and commented i smell drink from your breath i hope you weren't drinking at lunchtime. Reply was in a broad Fife accent. Aye Ken wie had a few pints there's nae way you would go up a big chimney like that when yie were sober.  Howls of laughter from all present engineer shook his head and walked away.Just a funny(but true) story not to take away any of the bravery or professionalism of these guys. They looked at converting Inverkip to gas but the design of the boiler furnace was not suitable. Something to do with calorific value and fuel to air ratio. Pity it never never materialised it was a great place to work.

It occurs to me that some of the disicussion in this thread  might explain one of the rather strange stories associated with the power station, viz. the readying of the Gastor and Nestor for sea.   Given the info about the gas pre heating of the Inverkip boilers it is clear that the Inverkip engineers would have had the skills and experience in maintaining the equipment necessary to handle largescale, high pressure gas installations and would have been ideally qualified to carry out such work on the ships.   Given also the size of the diesel standby generators they would also have had the skills and experience to prepare cold layup engines for use.   These facts could explain the apparently strange choice of the power station at the time.

TankCore also talks about the station was considered for conversion to gas.    I always thought that gas powered stations were actually gas turbine powered as indeed at least some where but how common were gas fired boiler stations?  Has another one of my illusions been shattered?

Note that the Inverkip work on the LNG tankers was only to reactivate them, and make safe for the trip to the French shipyard that was actually awarded the refit contract. "We" only got some crumbs.

There are different types of power station, and gas can be used in various ways, it is merely the fuel, and how it is used on the scale of a power station is determined by its cost at any given time.

If it's cheap, it can be used as an alternative in a suitably equipped station with boilers that can use either oil or gas. In relative term, these would be expected to be relatively large stations in terms of generating capacity, in order to make them thermally efficient, and therefore economic for the fuel being used. They would - at the time - be more expensive than traditional coal fired stations, and only brought on line to make up for seasonal variations and demands.

As you note, gas turbines can be used, however these are generally smaller and more expensive to run, so tend to be kept in standby, ready to be activated to meet unexpected demand, as their small size and lack of boilers mean they take relatively little time to bring on line, but only when needed because of their cost.

In Scotland, we have the best of all, as we have hydro, which can be turned on in minutes, or even seconds if already spinning and ready to placed online to meet a planned peak demand, and better still, there is out pumped storage - soaking excess base load at quiet times, and returning it when needed.

Did you know that pumped storage was actually part of the nuclear power system? Put in place to allow nuclear power stations to operate continuously, storing their output when not needed as it was generated, and returning it to the grid when needed.

Wonder if any of the No-Nukes Green Loonies ever thought of attacking Scotland's pumped storage hydro power stations in order to scupper the nuclear power plan?

In the summer, when we were in Wales, we went to the Dinorwic pumped-storage hydro power station - it really is an impressive place. It can go from zero to 1,320MW in 12 seconds...

The reactivation of the LPG tankers at inverkip would not have been project managed by the the staff at inverkip. It would have been executed by them under work instructions and direction from the ship owners or contractors employed by them. This in no way detracts from the skills of inverkip power station staff who in the main were multi skilled. Having come in the main from a shipyard background. A power station is like a ship only much bigger. It has all the same prime movers back ups etc as a power station only on a smaller scale. I think that the attraction of Inverkip as a location for reactivation was more probably due to it's location and suitability as a deep water berth. Inverkip was used in the main as a peak load station coming on mainly in the morning to assist the hydro stations. There is a popular myth that hydro energy is electricty generated for nothing apart from the capital cost of the equipment. This is not the case there is only so much potential energy stored in the way of water in the highlands of scotland. The generators in a hydro station are also pumps when reversed. So they generate elecricity during peak demand but consume elecricity when pumping the water back into the loch where it came from. How good was it when this was all owned directed and balanced by one publicly utility. Now it's all privatley owned by various competing companies where the prime objective is profit more the than the common good Resultant disaster. Power cuts have not happened yet but we are not far away. Watch this space.