The Manawatu Daily Times A Mammoth Power Pool

Manawatu Times, Volume LIV, Issue 7192, 26 June 1933, Page 6

The Manawatu Daily Times A Mammoth Power Pool

Completion of a transmission tie line between the NiagaraHndson and New York-Edison electric systems links together generating - stations in the north-eastern section of the United States and Canada with combined capacities of almost 13,000,000 horse-power, according to figures quoted in the Electrical Woild. Nearly one-fourth of the United States’ developed waterpower resources and a like proportion of its stcnm-geneiating plants arc embraced in this immense interconnected netw'oik.

Such a pooling of power resources thrills the imagination as one contemplates the invisible transfers of ■energy guided by the slender-looking steel tower lines which traverse the countryside with giant strides; but how few persons who arc not engineering specialists appreciate the true functions of modem power exchange.

In long-distance wire telephony the waves vibrating in character with the conversing voices or with the musical instruments of a radio broadcast pass from terminal to terminal, even if transcontinental mileages lie between. Not so with interregional power tics. Instead of energy being shipped in block” from the Atlantic seaboard to the Great Lakes and vice versa, electricity is in reality shifted from one company network to the next as a kind of neighbourly assistance.

A power shortage arises suddenly or gradually on one system and a surplus of generating capacity may exist on another. Interconnection enables the system operators to pool these resources by transferring electricity in specified amounts back and forth as required, so that one organisation gives a “boost” to the next one’s load, and so on.

For example, suppose more energy is needed in New York City. Up in Buffalo a dispatcher will send more Niagara Falls electricity to Syracuse. The Oswego River plant which ordinarily supplies Syracuse will shunt its power on to Utica, which in turn will give a lift to Albany, and the Greenland plant below Albany will deliver some thousands of kilowatts to the Edison system in Yonkers and the Bronx. Thus the effect will be as if the metropolis received power direct from Niagara—or the movement might be reversed so that the Dunwoodic sub-station in Yonkers would help indirectly to carry an unusual load in Buffalo—but none of the power actually would be transmitted more than 150 miles. Losses in the transmission of bulk power are too great even at 220,000 volts to ship identical energy economically between places 400 or 500 miles apart, though “stunt” transmissions of spectacular length have been achieved experimentally

By this process of inter-system team play the advantages of interconnection are realised. The great north-eastern power pool is unlikely to interchange more than 20 per cent, of its plant capacity; but as this is done at exactly the right time and places, it offers a most valuable means of coping with operating contingencies. When the up-country water supply is ample, surplus hydro-electric energy is sent into the urban areas, reducing the consumption of fuel in steam-plant service. In dry seasons when the stream flow is inadequate and the reservoirs are lower, the tidewater fuel-burning plants, take up the burden and send energy into the interior.