By 1904 coal
gas was a well-established source of energy for urban
streetlights and homes, but electricity generation was only
beginning to ramp up. Dublin's principal power plant, the
Dublin Corporation Electric Light Station, was at 49-56 Fleet
Street, two blocks south of the Liffey in the area now called
Temple Bar. (Temple Bar, the street, makes a continuous
walking thoroughfare with Fleet Street.) As Stephen walks down
the street in Wandering Rocks he hears "The whirr of
flapping leathern bands and hum of dynamos from the
powerhouse."
The first image here shows the huge "leathern bands"
that linked the kinetic engines (no doubt steam-powered) to
the "dynamos" (invented by Michael Faraday in 1831)
that generated the electricity. My thanks to Vincent Van Wyk
for calling my attention to this rare photograph––it seems to
be the only one of this power station––and to the fact that
today the building is occupied by the Thunder Road Cafe. Above
the windows of the restaurant one can still see the flat
arches that held windows on the Fleet Street wall of the Light
Station.
In a 2016 web article
(esbarchives.ie/2016/02/29/the-story-before-the-shannon-scheme),
archivists at Ireland's leading energy company, the
Electricity Supply Board, note that "the Dublin Electric Light
Company was established in 1880, with a small generating
station at Schoolhouse Lane. It was given permission to erect
a number of electric lights around the city, including
Stephen’s Green and Nassau Street. By 1881 there were 17 arc
lamps in use in Dublin, rising to 114 a year later.
While arc lamps were used to light the main streets of the
city, side streets continued to be lit mainly by gas lamps
until the more efficient tungsten filament gas
filled lamp became available.... In 1892, Dublin
Corporation opened a new generating station at Fleet Street
with an output of 0.9 megawatts, which was soon replaced by a
new station at Pigeon House Fort on the
estuary of the River Liffey in 1903, which had a generating
capacity of 3 megawatts."
