Midlands Electricity Explained
The Midlands Electricity Board was the public sector utility company responsible for the purchase of electricity from the electricity generator (the Central Electricity Generating Board from 1958) and its distribution and sale of electricity to customers in the Midlands of England prior to 1990. As Midlands Electricity plc it was listed on the London Stock Exchange and was once a constituent of the FTSE 100 Index.
History
The Midlands Electricity Board was formed in 1947, under the Electricity Act of that year. The counterpart of the East Midlands board, it served southern, and western parts of Warwickshire, as well as the counties of Worcestershire, Herefordshire, Shropshire, and Staffordshire, as well as most of Gloucestershire, the West Midlands conurbation and northern Oxfordshire.
The key people on the board were: Chairman G. S. Buckingham (1964, 1967), deputy chairman R. Mallet (1967), full-time members R. Mallet (1964) R. Cook and H. A. P. Caddell (1967).[1]
As with the EMEB, it kept a network of showrooms across its area, to allow customers to pay bills, and order many types of electrical goods. The MEB, Southern Electric and Eastern Electricity merged their showrooms, forming the Powerhouse store chain in the early 1990s. The total number of customers supplied by the board was:[2] [3]
MEB customers, 1948–88!Year!1948/9!1960/1!1965/6!1970/1!1975/6!1978/9!1980/1!1985/6!1987/8!1988/9| Number of customers (thousands) | 938 | 1,454 | 1,610 | 1,721 | 1,8229 | 1,893 | 1,939 | 2,032 | 2,073 | 2,096 | |
|---|
The amount of electricity, in GWh, sold by Midlands Electricity Board was:
In 1990, as part of the privatisation of the UK electricity industry, the board became
Midlands Electricity plc. The new business was split up, and sold several times: the supply business to
Npower in 1999, the distribution business to GPU Power UK, who continued to use the ‘a Midlands Electricity company’ tagline for a couple of years, and then sold to
Aquila, under whose short ownership it was renamed Aquila Networks,
[4] before being purchased by Powergen in 2004, becoming
Central Networks, part of
E.ON. The company was then sold in 2011 to American utilities company
PPL who owns the UK distribution company
Western Power Distribution, who were already operating in the license area of the previous company
SWEB (South West) and
Infralec (Wales), and rebranded the Midlands areas
WPD West Midlands PLC and
WPD East Midlands PLC (previously
EMEB). In 2021, PPL placed Western Power Distribution up for sale, being purchased by National Grid, who as of 21 September 2022 has rebranded the WPD business as National Grid. The distribution business is internally known as National Grid Electricity Distribution (NGED) to differentiate from National Grid Electricity Transmission (NGET).
See also
- Companies merged into MEB
- Npower
Notes and References
- Electricity Council publicity brochures 1964 and 1967
- Book: Electricity Council. Handbook of Electricity Supply Statistics 1979. Electricity Council. 1980. 0851880762. London. 58 63.
- Book: Electricity Council. Handbook of Electricity Supply Statistics 1989. Electricity Council. 1990. 085188122X. London. 51 56.
- News: Aquila Completes Purchase of Ownership Interest in Midlands Electricity. . Business Wire . 2002-05-08 . 2008-09-05 .
