Silahtarağa Power Station

The Silahtarağa Power Station (Turkish: Silahtarağa Elektrik Santralı) was a coal-fired generating station located in Istanbul Turkey. The Ottoman Empire's first power plant, it was in use from 1914 to 1983. The site has since been converted into a university campus for the Istanbul Bilgi University and houses two museums and several facilities. It was refurbished and renamed SantralIstanbul in 2007.

The power plant was designed as the first in the Ottoman Empire apart from a small hydroelectric power station built in 1902 outside Tarsus in Anatolia. The Budapest based Austria-Hungarian Gas and Electric Company, Ganz, was contracted to build the power station. In 1910 the firm had established the Ottoman Electric Company in cooperation with two Belgian banks: the Banque de Bruxelles and the Banque Generale de Credit Hangrois. The company obtained an imperial concession lasting 50 years, and built its first station a coal-fired plant in the Silahtarağa neighbourhood, Eyüp at the upper end of Golden Horn.

The power plant started service on the February 11, 1914 it supplied power initially to the tram network and shortly after to the sultan's palace. Before long electrical power was prevalent in the city's more prosperous districts as well.

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