Tilbury Green Power Plant is the most recent addition to the Port of Tilbury’s industrial hubs. Unlike the other sites we visit, this one is geared towards producing energy – generating electricity from waste wood, or what is known in the industry as ‘renewable biomass’. As we arrive for our visit, we see strange objects in the station forecourt; a huge plastic pillow, distended with 10 cubic metres of distilled water and a sealed-off bunker, full of dust, inspected by staff through cameras, remotely.

We start in the ‘waste-wood yard’; trucks offload volumes of shuttering, planks, bedsteads and cupboards. These are pummelled into wood chips in the adjacent ‘turbine room’ – a process that happens only by night. ‘It’s deafening when the machines turn on here, the whole building shakes’, our tour guide tells us. By day, a mechanical jig is ‘top-loading’ tonnes of dust into an HGV truck.

Ian – the site manager here– explains the surges and falls of the national grid. Christmas is the quietest time for power stations, and then, in busier times of emergency, ‘lonely stations’ that otherwise stand empty for much of the year are activated. Although you wouldn’t know it as a consumer; all electricity sent through the national grid, whether its generated from coal, gas or renewable sources, being co-mingled into a single charge.

Blog: Eloise Hawser
Images: Frances Christie, Hayley Dixon, and Eloise Hawser

This event was presented as part of 800,000 tonnes: Waste Management and Recycling in Essex, a programme of displays, site tours, and discussions that took place to map waste in Essex past and present by artist Eloise Hawser, who wrote the above text. 800,000 tonnes was supported by a National Lottery Grant from Arts Council England.