Kelvin House head office for Adelaide Electricity Supply Company with main control centre for whole power system

The former Kelvin House offices building on North Terrace, Adelaide, was designed by architect Eric Habershon McMichael who had also done the nearby Verco building.
Image courtesy City of Adelaide

Kelvin House, built between 1925-1926 on North Terrace, Adelaide city, as offices for the Adelaide Electric Supply Company Limited, also housed a mains control centre from 1940, with an illuminated power system status diagram board, on a large, polished blackwood desk, that allowed a company officer to see the status of the entire South Australian electrical power system from Osborne Power Station.

Any part of that network could be disconnected at the direction of the mains control officer by using local circuit breakers or switches. If a line became faulty, a local circuit breaker would open automatically and isolate that section of the network. If a section of any line in the network needed maintenance, the Mains Control Officer could arrange to disconnect it from the rest of the power system.

The London-based private Adelaide Electric Supply Company Limited took over monopoly supply of power to Adelaide and other settled areas of the settled areas from 1904. It moved from its former headquarters on the corner of Grenfell Street and East Terrace, Adelaide, to the new North Terrace building called Kelvin House.

The Kelvin House name paid tribute to William Thomson, Baron Kelvin of Largs. Thomson was a Scottish engineer, mathematician and physicist who made important contributions to early experiments on electricity.

Klevin House was the first tall building in Adelaide to include the art deco style. The building’s architect, Eric Habershon McMichael, had toured the United States and Canada in 1925 to study the latest North American tall building designs. He became well known for his contemporary tall building projects in Adelaide city, including  the nearby Verco building (1911) on North Terrace and the Savings Bank of South Australia’s head office on King William Street.

Kelvin House had a reinforced concrete frame and brick filling walls. The façade was finished in white cement tinted a buff colour. Art deco detailing tops the building. At the time of its construction, the building was fitted with the latest technology, including two Waygood-Otis passenger lifts. The total cost of the project was about £50,000.

The Adelaide Electricity Supply Company had its life in South Australia ended in 1946. The company refused to use coal from Leigh Creek in South Australia, as proposed by Thomas Playford’s Liberal Country League state government, and, to reinforce its opposition, it bought boilers that could only use the black coal that came from New South Wales.  

Playford obtained federal government funds from Labor prime minister Ben Chifley to nationalise the South Australian electricity supply. The state government-owned Electricity Trust of South Australia took over the Adelaide Electricity Supply Company operations in September 1946.

The name Kelvin House for the heritage-listed North Terrace building disappeared with the Adelaide Electricity Supply Company.