The station was constructed in 1948–50 by the British Electricity Authority. It used two tall
cooling towers to cool its water. The boiler plant comprised five
Babcock & Wilcox pulverised fuel fired boilers capable of delivering 1,425,000 lb/h (180.0 kg/s) of steam at 660
psi (45.5
bar) and 393 °C. Following the construction of the national grid in 1928-33 Westwood power station was connected to an electricity grid ring which included the power stations at
Southport,
Lister Drive (Liverpool),
Warrington and
Ribble (Preston); this was one of three electricity rings in the North West. The generating capacity of the station was 128 MW comprising four uprated
British Thomson-Houston 32 MW
turbo-alternators. The first generating set was commissioned in September 1951 followed by the other sets in December 1951, September 1952, and December 1953. Steam condensing and cooling was by two Mitchell reinforced concrete hyperbolic cooling towers, each tower had a capacity of 3 million gallons per hour (3.79 m3/s). The generating capacity and output from Westwood power station is given in the following graph and table.
Westwood power station electricity output, GWh{ "version": 2, "width": 400, "height": 200, "data": [ { "name": "table", "values": [ { "x": 1954, "y": 58 }, { "x": 1955, "y": 631 }, { "x": 1956, "y": 606 }, { "x": 1957, "y": 457 }, { "x": 1958, "y": 545 }, { "x": 1961, "y": 543 }, { "x": 1962, "y": 583 }, { "x": 1972, "y": 217 }, { "x": 1979, "y": 280 }, { "x": 1982, "y": 186 }, { "x": 1963, "y": 610 } ] } ], "scales": [ { "name": "x", "type": "ordinal", "range": "width", "zero": false, "domain": { "data": "table", "field": "x" } }, { "name": "y", "type": "linear", "range": "height", "nice": true, "domain": { "data": "table", "field": "y" } } ], "axes": [ { "type": "x", "scale": "x" }, { "type": "y", "scale": "y" } ], "marks": [ { "type": "rect", "from": { "data": "table" }, "properties": { "enter": { "x": { "scale": "x", "field": "x" }, "y": { "scale": "y", "field": "y" }, "y2": { "scale": "y", "value": 0 }, "fill": { "value": "steelblue" }, "width": { "scale": "x", "band": "true", "offset": -1 } } } } ] } In the year ending 31 March 1972 the station's load factor (the average load as a per cent of maximum output capacity) was 20.6 per cent. ==Today==