Bloom Street, Manchester
Introduction
The photograph on this page of Bloom Street, Manchester by Chris Allen as part of the Geograph project.
The Geograph project started in 2005 with the aim of publishing, organising and preserving representative images for every square kilometre of Great Britain, Ireland and the Isle of Man.
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Bloom Street, Manchester
Image: © Chris Allen Taken: 21 Nov 1992
This is well in the Gay Village but my focal point was the truncated city centre chimney. This is on Bloom Street (Winser Street) Power Station. This had been built as an electrical power station but in more recent years had provided district heating. It was built in 1901 as a power station for lighting and tramways with reciprocating steam engines. The original Babcock & Wilcox boilers were replaced by oil-fired boilers in 1953. District heating, especially combined as a CHP (combined heat and power) scheme is an excellent energy efficient concept that has yet to find much favour in the UK. The best schemes make use of in excess of 90% of the energy in the fuel. By contrast your big old coal burning power station is around 37-40% efficient, many combined cycle stations can do around 50% and the very best have cracked 60%. On the other hand a steam locomotive was around 6% (all figures approximate).
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Image Location
Latitude
53.475968
Longitude
-2.23937