There are two Power Stations on the Willington Site, both of approximately similar installed capacity and totalling 804 M.W.

Willington 'A' Power Station was first commissioned in late 1957 and contains four 104 M.W. Generating Units comprised of International Combustion Boilers and English Electric Turbo-Alternator Sets. Each unit, when on full load, will burn approximately 1,000 tons of coal per day, and of this coal there will remain some 200 tons of ash which has to be disposed of by pumping through pipe lines and by road transport.

The second Power Station on the Site, Willington 'B' was first commissioned in 1962 and comprises two 200 M.W. generating units equipped with Babcock and Wilcox Boilers and A.E.I. Turbo-Alternator Sets. The 'B' Station boilers will each burn some, 2,000 tons of coal per day when on full load, leaving behind approximately 400 tons per boiler per day of ash, all of which has to be taken away by road.

The fuel consumption at Willington Power Station, when on full load, is of the order of 8,000 tons of coal per day, the majority of which is delivered to site by British Railways from collieries of the East Midlands Coal Field.

The output from the Willington Power Stations is fed into the 132,000 volt grid system (Nos. 1, 3 and 4 Units). Over these two transmission systems power is delivered to the surrounding area, and to a large extent to the South of England for use in the areas of Greater London and Bristol.

Coal is transported from the railway sidings by belt conveyors to overhead bunkers, where there is a capacity for more than twenty four hours normal steaming. From the bunkers, the coal flows into the grinding mills, where it is dried by very hot air and pulverised into an extremely fine black powder. The stream of hot drying air, flowing rapidly upward through the mills, entrains the fine coal dust and carries it through pipes into the boiler combustion chamber, where the coal dust/hot air mixture burns as if it were a gas flame.