Transformer Alley

Transformer alley at White Bay Power Station is the narrow yard behind the switch house, where the plant's power transformers stood in a row, stepping the generator output up to transmission voltage before it left the site. The yard is bounded by concrete walls and a chain-link fence; overhead, the steel framework of the bus-bar gantry carries the connecting conductors. The transformers themselves have been removed, their concrete plinths still in the ground with the anchor bolts protruding. Oil-stain patches on the plinths show where the tanks of each transformer sat. The grass has grown back through the cracks in the paving between the plinths.

Power transformers at White Bay handled the step-up from generator voltage to the 33 kV transmission level that fed Sydney's tram and rail traction sub-stations. Each unit was an oil-cooled core, mounted in an outdoor enclosure with bus-bar connections from the switch house and outgoing feeders to the network. The transformers were among the highest-value items at the plant and were removed in the 1990s as part of the decontamination and stripping program. The alley in this photograph is what is left: plinths, anchor bolts, oil stains, and the empty space where the machines once sat.