Midlands Electricity

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.

Midlands Electricity
IndustryElectricity
Founded1990
Defunct2002
FateAcquired
SuccessorE.ON
HeadquartersHalesowen, UK
The area of MEB within Great Britain

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:[2][3]

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 the 21st 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

References
  1. Electricity Council publicity brochures 1964 and 1967
  2. Electricity Council (1980). Handbook of Electricity Supply Statistics 1979. London: Electricity Council. pp. 58 63. ISBN 0851880762.
  3. Electricity Council (1990). Handbook of Electricity Supply Statistics 1989. London: Electricity Council. pp. 51 56. ISBN 085188122X.
  4. "Aquila Completes Purchase of Ownership Interest in Midlands Electricity". Business Wire. 8 May 2002. Retrieved 5 September 2008.
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