Electric Light and Power Supply Corporation
The power station was located on waterfront land, adjacent to the Iron Cove Bridge, and with a wharf where coal could be unloaded.
[7] Electric Light and Power Supply Corporation Limited was a publicly listed company, with shares traded on the stock exchange.
[22] The generators of the huge meat cold store of the Pastoral Finance Association (PFA), at Kirribilli, also supplied electricity—almost certainly direct current[23]—to some customers on the north side of the harbour, from January 1909 until around 1922.
[28][26] However, PFA failed in its objective to set up a larger power station (and garbage incinerator) to supply all the municipalities on the Lower North Shore, with alternating current electricity.
Both SMC and EL&PSC were displacing the hitherto dominant gas lamps, for both street and house lighting, in the areas that they supplied with electricity.
[58][51] In 1912, the chairman of AGL was quoted as saying that, "It was only a question of time, ... when these councils would find out their mistake to have effected the change [from gas street lighting to electric]".
[60][61][62] As its area of operations had not expanded, the new substations probably indicate that EL&PSC was increasing the amount of electricity that it was supplying to its customers there, most likely displacing gas usage.
[66] The Cockatoo Island Dockyard, just offshore from the Balmain Power Station, had its own powerhouse to generate electricity for the docks.
An obstacle to such a merger was the apparent profitability of EL&PSC, which gave the company no compelling reason to sell its business to SCC cheaply.
[75][76] NSWGR was also a supplier of bulk electrical power to some municipalities in metropolitan Sydney, typically those further away from the city centre[77] and to the south.
[80] By the mid-1920s, SMC's Pyrmont Power Station had no further room for capacity expansion, but demand for electricity continued to rise.
[81] In April 1923, SMC reached an agreement, with the Railway Commissioners, for NSWGR to provide, from White Bay, the additional power that it needed.
[80] There were also two interconnections to the NSWGR network from the Southern Electricity Supply (SES), at Sydenham in Sydney (to Port Kembla) from around 1941, and at Orange (to Cowra) from 1947.
[80] A major difference between the two power supply entities, SMC and EL&PSC, was that EL&PSC always supplied its street lighting and consumers' mains with alternating current, using three-phase transformers to step down the voltage for low-voltage 50 Hz alternating current reticulation at 415 / 240 Volts.
There were five substations in and close to the Sydney CBD area, included in the 1904 plan, but the last three used transformers to provide low voltage alternating current.
[56] In 1929, SMC opened a large modern power station, Bunnerong,[68][88] and it adopted low-voltage alternating current reticulation as its standard for all new installations, in 1930.
Insufficient generating capacity resulted in increasingly frequent black outs, exacerbated by strikes at power stations[66] and the 1949 coal industry strikes,[95][96] a cumulative lack of non-essential maintenance during wartime, breakdowns and lengthy repairs of critical items of equipment,[97][98] and an inability to procure new capital equipment due the longer-term impacts of wartime restrictions on industry and the disruption of international trade.
[66] These interruptions of power supply had political implications for the New South Wales Government,[99] but also presented an opportunity for EL&PSC to expand its business.
During the late 1940s, EL&PSC attempted to become the bulk power supplier to Parramatta and Granville Electric Supply Company Limited (P&GESC).
[105] After the Second World War, it was recognised that the number and small size of the municipalities in New South Wales, were constraints on developing necessary infrastructure.
Critically, there was no single entity responsible for planning and implementation of all new generating and power transmission capacity, in New South Wales, at a time when a major expansion would inevitably occur.
Conde had previously held the wartime role of Deputy Regional Controller of Electricity Supply in New South Wales.
[113][114] Conde's appointment was intended to deal with the frequent blackouts of the period and, almost certainly, was influenced by the better performance of EL&PSC in expanding generating capacity and maintaining a reliable supply, relative to SCC.
[118] It was not until 1956 that EL&PSC finally was nationalised, and its generation and distribution assets were transferred to the Electricity Commission of New South Wales, on 1 January 1957.
[1][2][57] The newly created Prospect County Council took over the distribution and street lighting operations of the subsidiary, Parramatta and Granville Electric Supply Company Limited, from 1 July 1958.
Despite their small land plots making them unsuitable for multiple occupancy housing redevelopment, the substations had become emblematic in the broader argument over what kinds of buildings and how much of the area should be heritage protected.
