Alarm Indicator Panel

An alarm indicator panel at Wangi Power Station hangs on the wall of one of the operations rooms, a large grid of lamps and labels covering a steel-fronted cabinet. Each lamp position is paired with a hand-painted label naming the condition the alarm reported: high pressure, low water level, motor overload, bearing temperature, and so on across dozens of named conditions. The labels are in hand-painted lettering, white on the black painted face of the panel. Most of the lamps are out. A single lamp on the bottom row is intact, its red lens still glowing faintly when the photograph was made if any auxiliary power was still reaching the panel.

Alarm indicator panels were the visual side of the plant monitoring system. Each abnormal condition somewhere in the plant tripped its corresponding lamp on the panel, telling the operator on duty which system needed attention. Wangi's panels covered the boiler systems, the turbine auxiliaries, the cooling water plant, and the electrical distribution. The operators worked the panels through every shift from 1958 to the closure of B Station on 31 October 1986. The panels stayed in place when the rest of the plant was wound down. Each lamp position is the last condition that was reported from it.