page_title: Dunston Power Station
section_title: Closure, demolition and present
hierarchical_section_title: Dunston Power Station / Closure, demolition and present
caption_attribution_description: English: Dunston Power Station, Data from Geograph: Description: One of the few remaining buildings at Dunston Power Station. ICBM: 54.959542562799, -1.6606219944599 Location: (about 2 km from) near to Dunston, Gateshead, Great Britain.
context_page_description: Dunston Power Station refers to a pair of adjacent coal-fired power stations in the North East of England, now demolished. They were built on the south bank of the River Tyne, in the western outskirts of Dunston in Gateshead. The two stations were built on a site which is now occupied by the MetroCentre. The first power station built on the site was known as Dunston A Power Station, and the second, which gradually replaced it between 1933 and 1950, was known as Dunston B Power Station. The A Station was, in its time, one of the largest in the country, and as well as burning coal had early open cycle gas turbine units. The B Station was the first of a new power station design, and stood as a landmark in the Tyne for over 50 years. From the A Station's opening in 1910 until the B Station's demolition in 1986, they collectively operated from the early days of electricity generation in the United Kingdom, through the industry's nationalisation, and until a decade before its privatisation.
  Dunston A had a generating capacity of 48.85 megawatts in 1955, and Dunston B had a generating capacity of 300 MW.
context_section_description: In its time, Dunston B Power Station ranked consistently in England's leading stations, both in terms of thermal efficiency and cost per unit of electricity. However, the station eventually became outdated, and notification of its partial closure was given in October 1975, with some units being closed the following October. It was then only used as a stand-by station, operating only at peak electrical demand times. Finally, after some units having been in operation for about 40 years, the station ceased to generate electricity on 26 October 1981. At the time of closure, only 98 MW of the station's capacity was in use.
  The station was demolished in 1986 to make way for the MetroCentre, which became Europe's largest shopping and leisure centre. The land on which the MetroCentre was built was bought for only £100,000, because the site was water-logged and had been used for dumping ash produced by the power station. American warehouse club chain Costco have since built a store on the actual site of the power station. The power station's large indoor sub-station still stands alongside it, as the only trace of the site's former use.
  Due to the closure of Dunston power station, along with the later closures of the power stations at Stella and Blyth, the northern part of North East England has become heavily dependent upon the National Grid for electrical supply. However, in the south of the region there are still two large power stations at Hartlepool and Teesside, meaning that the south of the region does not depend upon the National Grid for electrical supply as much as the north of the region.
caption: All that remains of the station is a large indoor sub-station.
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