President Street Power Station, Johannesburg was an early 20th-centurypower station inJohannesburg,South Africa.
When the President Street Power Station was constructed, supplytenders were invited. Although the cheapest was for asteam driven plant,consultants recommended agas engine scheme which promised sufficient savings infuel consumption to recover the increased capital cost within a few years.
The estimated power needed by Johannesburg, almost 10MW, required gas engines bigger than any previously built. Mordey & Dawbarn, the consultingengineers, recommended the following supplies, which were adopted by themunicipality:
Stewart and Company, theScottishcontractors, supplied untested andexperimental engines. There had been a history of costly failure of gas engines in theUK linked to the problem of breakdowns caused by theimpurities inbituminous coal. Apparently no one had checked before starting on the scheme whether the bituminous coal to be used in thegas producers was suitable for the installation. Within months the engines ran into serious problems. New engines and producer plant provedunreliable and expensive to operate and there were heavymaintenance costs.
Anexplosion in theboiler house in March 1907 led to the entire installation being shut down in May 1907. By mid-1907 thecity council rejected the whole scheme and institutedlegal proceedings against the suppliers to recover their losses.
