A HUGE ELECTRIC STATION.

South Canterbury Times, Issue 4911, 21 January 1889, Page 3

A HUGE ELECTRIC STATION.

Electric lighting has not made such progress in England aa in America, owing to certain restrictive precautionary legislation. Thia has now lapsed, and electric companies are being formed in numbers. What will be aa yet the hugest electric supply station in the world is now being erected and fitted up at Deptford, on a bank of the Thames a few miles from London, whence light and power will be supplied to a portion of the metropolis. A building of massive construction 195 feet by 70feet, three storeys high, with a basement, is to have two floors filled with the largest boilers yet made, to supply steam at 20Dlbs pressure. Four-and-twenty are to be put in at first, to furnish 40,000 horse power. To complete [the plant of boilers will require twice as many more. Above the boiler rooms, the top story will be used as a coal store holding 4000 tons. Adjoining the boiler house is the engine room, 195 feet by 132 feet. “ Small ” engines of 1500 horse power are being put in to give the works a start, each driving a Ferranti high-1 ension dynamo of equivalent resistance. The station is to be fully equipped with 10,000 b.p, engines and a dynamo for each. The engines are of the compound inverted type, and the condensers will be placed in an aijoing room. The dynamos for these large engines will be monstrous affairs, each armature being 45 long, and its shaft 36 inches in diameter at the centre, the whole dynamo weighing about 500 tons, flhe power will be transmitted from the engines by cotton ropes. From the smaller 1500 b.p: engines the power is transmitted by a 40ft drum and 40 five-inch ropes,

The whole of the electricity to be produced by complete plant of ICO,OOO horse power, is to be conveyed to London by a copper conductor in the shape of a tube only inches in diameter and bare 3-16th inch thick, a quantity of metal about equal to that in a rod four-fifths of an inch square. This conductor for the outgoing current will be enclosed within and perfectly insulated from another copper tube, 2 and 5-16ths inch in diameter and bare 3-161 hs thick. The outer tube will not be insulated at all, but will be laid in the ground and “ make earth ” all the way. The tension or electro-motive force to be used is 10,000 volts. Allen Bros.’ dynamo works at 65 volts ; the Atlas dynamo 10 ’0 volts. 1000 volts is murderous; 10,000 means annihilation. Yet Mr Ferranti, engineer for the establishment, waters it down to harmlessness for distribution. The complete plant proposed to ho set up (with room for extensions) is of 100,000 horse power and dynamos to. match, equal to 2,000,000 lamps, or twenty per horse power. The company expected to get to work early this month.