The Newcastle upon Tyne Electric Supply Company was founded in
Newcastle upon Tyne,
North East England, in 1889 by the industrialist
John Theodore Merz. The company was one of two that were founded in the Newcastle area that year, with the
Newcastle and District Electric Lighting Company (DisCo) founded by
Charles Algernon Parsons. A line was roughly drawn down the city's Grainger Street, with NESCo supplying the area to the east and DisCo that to the west. NESCo opened its first power station,
Pandon Dene, in 1890. Merz's son,
Charles Hesterman Merz worked at the Pandon Dene station and became the company's Chief Consultant Engineer. Charles Merz's design company,
Merz & McLellan, which he founded with
William McLellan, undertook much of NESCo's design work from 1898 onward. They designed the pioneering
Neptune Bank Power Station, which opened in 1901. It was the first power station in the United Kingdom to generate
three-phase electric power, and the first to supply electricity for industrial purposes rather than just lighting. This led to the rapid expansion of NESCo, and gave the Tyneside industries an advantage over those in other areas. For the 30 years following the opening of the Neptune Bank station, NESCo became one of the World's leading companies in power station development. Carliol House Ltd. had been founded in 1924 to build and administer the building itself. It remained a separate company until 1974, after the nationalisation of the company. The British electricity industry was
nationalised in 1948 under the
Electricity Act 1947. The industry was reorganised by region and the
British Electricity Authority (NESCo) was set up for the North East region and was based upon the area covered by NESCo, but also included the areas covered by DisCo, the Askrigg and Reeth Supply Company and the Hawes Electric Lighting Company. The area covered stretched from
York to the Scottish border. British Electricity Authority (NESCo) was later renamed the
North Eastern Electricity Board. ==References==