Power Play

April 1952

Next time your Wi-Fi router breaks down, remember this. There was a time when Singaporeans had neither Internet nor air-conditioning. Before there was a stable supply of electricity, most people couldn't even rely on lightbulbs - instead they had to make do with manually-operated contraptions for their daily needs. In 1951, power blackouts were a frequent occurrence as the St James Power Station - the first of its kind - could not cope with the demand. The new Pasir Panjang Power Station was the solution. Shown here at the construction stage, it was built at a cost of S$38 million and for an ultimate capacity of 150,000 kilowatts. It opened in December 1952. This led to a push by the Singapore City Council to boost sales by offering cheaper rentals of air-conditioning units and the Electrical Department to clear their backlog of electric stove applications. Pasir Panjang Power Station's heyday was in the early 1990s, when it had a capacity of 201 megawatts, but with the expansion and addition of other facilities islandwide, it was phased out along with Jurong Power Station in 1997.