Holborn Viaduct power station

It burnt coal to drive a steam engine which drove a 27-tonne (27-long-ton; 30-short-ton), 125 horsepower (93 kW) generator which produced direct current (DC) at 110 volts.

[4][5] The power station also provided electricity for private residences, which may have included nearby Ely Place.

[4] In 1878, the City of London Corporation had installed 16 electric arc lamps over the viaduct, but the experiment was discontinued within six months, and the bridge returned to gas lighting.

[4] The Victoria Embankment was lit with electric lamps at around the same time, using the Yablochkov candles demonstrated at the Exposition Universelle in Paris in 1878.

[3] Lacking the legal precedent to lay underground cables (digging the street was the sole prerogative of the gas companies),[4] Edison's associate Edward Hibberd Johnson discovered culverts existed on the Holborn Viaduct which would allow for electrical cables to be laid.