At the centre of operations was the National Control Centre of the National Grid in London, which was part of the control hierarchy for the system. The National Control Centre was based in Bankside House from 1962. There were also both area and district Grid Control Areas, which were originally at Newcastle upon Tyne, Leeds, Manchester, Nottingham, Birmingham, St Albans, East Grinstead and Bristol. The shift control engineers who worked in these control centres would cost, schedule and load-dispatch an economic commitment of generation to the main interconnected system (the 400/275/132 kV network) at an adequate level of security. They also had information about the running costs and availability of every power producing plant in England and Wales. They constantly anticipated demand, monitored and instructed power stations to increase, reduce or stop electricity production. They used the "merit order", a ranking of each generator in power stations based upon how much they cost to produce electricity. The objective was to ensure that electricity production and transmission was achieved at the lowest possible cost.
In 1981 the three-tier corporate transmission structure: National Control, area control rooms in the regions, and district control rooms (areas) was changed to a two-tier structure by merging the area and district control rooms.
The electricity generated, supplied and sold by the CEGB, in GWh, was as follows:
Note: imports are bulk supplies from the South of Scotland and France and from private sources, exports are bulk supplies to the South of Scotland and France.
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Financial statistics
A summary of the income and expenditure of the CEGB (in £ million) is as follows:
Regions
Detailed control of operational matters such planning, electricity generation, transmission and maintenance were delegated to five geographical regions. From January 1971, each region had a director-general, a director of generation, a director of operational planning, a director of transmission, a financial controller, a controller of scientific services and a personnel manager.
Midlands Region
Regional headquarters: Haslucks Green Road, Shirley, Solihull, West Midlands.
The Midlands Region was responsible for the operation of 38 power stations, over 170 sub-stations and nearly 2,000 miles (3,200 km) of grid transmission line in an area that covered 11,000 square miles (28,000 km2). The region produced more than a quarter of the electricity used in England and Wales and had a major share of the industrial construction programme mounted by the CEGB during the 1960s.
In 1948, the total generating capacity of all the power stations in the region was 2,016 MW only a little more than a modern 2,000 MW station. By 1957 the region's capacity was up to 4,000 MW, doubling to 8,000 MW by 1966 and rising to 14,000 MW in 1969 and 16,000 MW by 1971.
Previous chairmen of the Midlands Region were Arthur Hawkins, Gilbert Blackman, and R. L. Batley.
Prior to 1968 the Midlands Region was divided into the West Midlands Division and the East Midlands Division. The number of power stations, installed capacity and electricity supplied in the Midlands Region was:
North Eastern Region
Regional Headquarters: Merrion Centre, Leeds (1971). Beckwith Knowle, Otley Road, Harrogate.
Extending through Northumberland, Durham, Yorkshire and North Lincolnshire the North Eastern Region was responsible for the operation of 32 power stations capable of producing 8,000 MW of electricity. 108 substations and over 1,200 route miles of overhead lines transmitted the electricity to the Yorkshire Electricity Board and the North Eastern Electricity Board for passing onto the customer.
A previous chairman of the North Eastern Region was P.J. Squire.
Prior to 1968, the North Eastern Region was divided into the Northern Division and the Yorkshire Division. The number of power stations, installed capacity and electricity supplied in the North Eastern Region was:
North Western Region
Regional Headquarters: 825 Wilmslow Road, Manchester, M20 (1971). Europa House, Bird Hall Lane, Cheadle Heath, Stockport.
Previous chairman of the North Western Region were J.L. Ashworth and G.B. Jackson.
The number of power stations, installed capacity and electricity supplied in the North Western Region was:
South Eastern Region
Regional Headquarters: Bankside House, Sumner Street, London.
Past chairman of the South Eastern Region were G.N. Stone, H.J. Bennett and F.W. Skelcher.
Prior to 1968 the South Eastern Region was divided into the North Thames Division and the South Thames Division. The number of power stations, installed capacity and electricity supplied in the South Eastern Region was:
South Western Region
Regional Headquarters: 15–23 Oakfield Grove, Clifton, Bristol (until 1971). Bridgwater Road, Bedminster Down, Bristol (from 1978, now The Pavilions). Previous chairman of the South Western Region were Douglas Pask, Roy Beatt, A.C. Thirtle and R.H. Coates. Prior to 1968 the South Western Region was divided into the Southern Division, the Western Division and the South Wales Division. The number of power stations, installed capacity and electricity supplied in the South Western Region was:
Supplies to area boards
The supplies of electricity from the CEGB Regions to the area electricity boards in 1971–1972 and 1981–1982 were as follows. The average charge in 1971–1972 was 0.6519 pence/kWh, in 1981–1982 the charge was 3.0615 pence/kWh.
During the lifetime of the CEGB peak demand had more than doubled from 19,311 MW in 1958 to 47,925 MW in 1987. Sales of electricity had increased from 79.7 TWh in 1958 to 240 TWh in 1988.
Research and development
The CEGB had an extensive R&D section with its three principal laboratories at Leatherhead (Central Electricity Research Laboratories, CERL) (opened by the Minister of Power in May 1962), Marchwood Engineering Laboratory (MEL), and Berkeley Nuclear Laboratories (BNL). There were also five regional facilities and four project groups, North, South, Midlands and the Transmission Project Group. These scientific service departments (SSD) had a base in each region. A major SSD role was solving engineering problems with the several designs of 500 MW units. These were a significant increase in unit size and had many teething problems, most of which were solved to result in reliable service and gave good experience towards the design of the 660 MW units.
In the 1970s and 1980s, for the real-time control of power stations the R&D team developed the Cutlass programming language and application system. After privatisation, CUTLASS systems in National Power were phased out and replaced largely with Advanced Plant Management System (APMS) – a SCADA solution developed in partnership by RWE npower (a descendant company of CEGB) and Thales UK. APMS itself has since become obsolete. However, Eggborough was the last station, particularly unit 2; fully operated using APMS until its decommissioning in 2017.
In contrast, PowerGen, later taken over by E.ON (which further split to form Uniper), undertook a programme to port the entire system to current hardware. The most current version of Cutlass, 'PT-Cutlass Kit 9', runs on Motorola PPC-based hardware, with the engineering workstation and administrative functions provided by a standard Microsoft Windows PC. It is fully compatible (with a few minor exceptions) with the DEC PDP-11 version (kit 1) released by PowerGen and has a high level of compatibility with the final version of kit 1 formerly used at National Power. It was used at three UK power stations: Ratcliffe-on-Soar, Cottam, and Fiddlers Ferry until their decommissioning.
