Central Electricity Authority

The Central Electricity Authority (CEA) was a body that managed and operated the electricity supply industry in England and Wales between 1 April 1955 and 31 December 1957. The CEA replaced the earlier British Electricity Authority (BEA) as a result of the Electricity Reorganisation (Scotland) Act 1954, which moved responsibility for Scottish electricity supply to the Scottish Office.

Structure

The structure of the management board and the personnel in post remained the same as the BEA with the exception of the removal of representation by the chairman of the North of Scotland Hydro-Electric Board. There was a reduction from 14 to 12 of the number of area electricity boards – the South East Scotland Electricity Board and South West Scotland Electricity Board were removed from the CEA's management. The functions of the remaining area boards were unchanged.

Upon its establishment in April 1955 the chairman of the CEA was Lord Citrine; the two deputy chairmen were Sir Henry Self and Josiah Eccles.[1]

Appointments

Operations

Electricity generation and sales

The electricity generated, supplied and sold by the CEA, in GWh, was as follows: Note: import and export include bulk supplies from South of Scotland.

Customers

The numbers and types of CEA customers was as follows:

Employees

There was a total of 180,923 employees in the electricity supply industry 1956, this comprised:[5]

Managerial and higher executive: 1,335
Technical and scientific: 15,480
Technical staff trainees: 1,624
Executive, clerical, accountancy and sales: 40,636
Industrial: 115,934
Apprentices: 5,914

Strategic issues

In addition to the routine operations of generating and transmitting electricity the Central Electricity Authority dealt with a number of strategic issues.

In the mid-1950s the National Coal Board estimated that it would be unable to supply the electricity industry’s projected demand for coal in the 1960s.[6] Pressure was put on the CEA by the Ministry of Fuel and Power to adopt dual (coal and oil) firing in a large number of power stations being planned or then being constructed. The CEA believed that the cost of extra equipment and the high price of oil would make the scheme uneconomic. The CEA limited dual-firing to a small number of stations in the south of the country remote from coal fields.[6]

In addition to coal and oil, nuclear power was under development in the 1950s. The newly constituted CEA had urgently needed to find suitable sites for the first nuclear stations.[7] They had to be in the south of England near the major load centres, but away from major population areas. They needed to have good load-bearing properties for the heavy reactors and have an abundant source of water. Two sites were identified in

Research

The BEA had expanded the Central Electricity Research Laboratories at Leatherhead where the BEA/CEA had undertaken their own practical research on the ‘supergrid’, and on turbines and boilers. In the mid-1950s the CEA also commissioned research at universities on non-practical applications. These research contracts were placed on the advice of the authority's Research Council.[10][11]

Financial statistics

The financial income and expenditure of the CEA over its two full financial operating years (in £ million) was as follows:[12]

former name	British Electricity Authority
type	State owned government operational and regulatory body
industry	Energy: Electricity
fate	Abolished by restructuring of industry
predecessor	British Electricity Authority
successor	Central Electricity Generating Board, Electricity Council
founded	1 April 1955
defunct	31 December 1957
hq location city	London
hq location country	United Kingdom
area served	England and Wales
key people	see text
production	79,525 GWh
production year	1956
services	Electricity generating, transmission and sales
revenue	£413.2 million
revenue year	1956
num employees	182,936
num employees year	1957
divisions	12 Generation Divisions and Area Electricity Boards