“SUPER-POWER.”

Otago Daily Times, Issue 19218, 8 July 1924, Page 8

“SUPER-POWER.”

YAST ELECTRIC PROJECT FOE. AMERICA The United Stales is now engaged upon an enterprise, characteristically big, which seems likely to produce in the next few years profound ciuuigos in the life of the nation. It is an attempt to unite the whole of the country’s producton and distribution of mechanical energy in a single system. Ahoady the plan has been carried a long way towards realisation, writes the New York correspondent of Tho Times. In the Pacific Elates an unbroken lino of electric power stations stretches for 1200 miles, and presently a smilar unbroken lino will stretch for 1600 miles between Canada and Mexico. In part of New England and over a group of (ho Southern Slates there arc other largo systems all ready to be a part of tho groat articulation. And but very recently nine light and power companies in Pennsylvania organised still another combination of plants which, when tho time comes, will be fitted into the system. In tho south-west thero is a plan for putting the errant and destructive Colorado River to work, which will certainly result in tho creation of yet ono more system that can bo included in tho eventual greater union. It is not clear who originated the idea of a universal system cf power, but probably it gradually grew up out of the realisation that there must be co-opera-tion between States when rivers, which have scant respect for political boundaries, were to be utilised to produce electricity or any other form of power. More than that, there had to be co-operation with the Federal Government if rivers were to bo damped for power plants, because all tbo navigable waters of tho country are under Luo jurisdiction of the War Department. be *’Federal Government took no really important action for trie encouragement of new power enterprises until about four years ago when Congress created the Federal . ower Commission. In tho short t ime that tho commission has been functioning it has issued licenses for the installation ot plants with a total capacity for producing 7,500,000 h.p., and under its authority plants with a capacity of 2,400,000 h.p. have been built, or are being built Previously there had been built under Federal authorisation over a period of 20 years, plants with a capacity of hut 1.400.000 h.p. in all. How vast tho development, of electric power ha* been in recent years can he seen from tno fact that, whereas in 1919 the output of all plants in the United States was 38,921,000 of kilowatt hours, by 1923 it had risen to 55,928,000,000 of kilowatt hours. In tho earlier year 37.5 per cent, of the total output of electric energy was produced by water power and 62.5 per cent, by coal and other fuels ; but in 1923 the proportion had changed to 35.1 and 64.9 per cent. 'lhe alteration in the ratio is significant. ’ It means, not a diminution in water power enterprises, but an increase at a relatively faster rate of plants producing electricity from coal, oil, and other fuels. Carbo-olccirio plants are. of course, generally cheaper to install though not cheaper to maintain, than hydro-electric plants. And not only is eoa‘l comparatively inexpensive in the United States, but improvements have been made in tho methods of using it, so that only 2.41 h ’s required to produce a. kilowatt hour of electricity, as against 3.21 b in 1910.