[1] From September 1883 they provided electric lighting for the restaurant from a small generating plant in the basement of the building.

The plant comprised two multi-tubular Field boilers providing steam to two Armington and Sims engines each driving two 150-lamp Edison bipolar dynamos.

With growing electricity demand a new generating station was built in 1888 at Bull Inn Court, between Maiden Lane and The Strand.

[4] To supplement electricity supplies the Charing Cross Company built a new power station in 1896 at 85 Commercial Road, Lambeth on the south of the River Thames.

[4] The plant at Commercial Road had a capacity of 3,600 kW and operated at 1,000 V. The voltage was reduced to 200 V for distribution to customers by motor–generator sets located in local substations on the north side of the river.

A total of 2615.51 MWh of electricity was sold to 719 customers which powered 107,542 lamps, this provided an income to the company of £48,026-16-6d.

[8] In 1899 the company sought and received authority under the City of London Electric Lighting Act 1900 (63 & 64 Vict.

[5] One of the conditions of the act was that the company would provide, within two years, a power station to supply the City with electricity.

[9] Accordingly, a new station was constructed at Bow in the Borough of West Ham, about 4 miles north east of Charing Cross.

A separate operating undertaking within the Charing Cross Company was established to manage this supply.

Steam was from a pair of Hornsby vertical boilers with an output capacity of 140,000 lb/h (17.6 kg/s) at 160 psi (11.0 bar) for each 4 MW set.

[7] The 350 kW synchronous generators giving 400–440 V across the outer wires, supply was eventually 2 × 200 V on a three-wire system.

[12] Following the First World War the reciprocating engines at Bow were gradually replaced with more efficient steam turbines.

[14] The usual pattern at this period was the substitution of electricity in place of gas for street lighting.

The Charing Cross Company confirmed they continued to operate 165 arc lamps in the City of Westminster.

[21] It was noted in 1931 that major rebuilding work in the City and the West End particularly the construction of substantially larger buildings provided with ‘lavish’ lighting had increased the demand for electricity from the company.

[4] In 1903 the Charing Cross Company charged 3.78 d./kWh for a private electricity supply and 1.77 d./kWh for public lighting.

[26] The LPC amalgamated the ownership and management of the generating stations, but left the supply of electricity to customers with the constituent companies.

[27] From 1 January 1937 the Charing Cross Company acquired five other undertakings to coordinate the distribution of electricity in their areas of London.

[27] The Charing Cross Company changed its name again to Central London Electricity Limited.

[29] In 1954 the overall thermal efficiency of the station was 13.6 per cent, this had fallen to 9.84 percent in the final year of operation.

[4] The Shorts Gardens substation continued to generate electricity until the early 1960s, using internal combustion engines.