Electric and Steam Power

Stratford Evening Post, Volume XXXIX, Issue 87, 17 August 1923, Page 2

Electric and Steam Power

UNIQUE DEVELOPMENT !N SWEDEN. Mr Ballinger, a New Zealand engineer who has studied post war ! electrical power development in Swe- ] den, states there are no fewer than St>7 hydro-elect;ical stations in Sweden, and the latest supplies twice the horso-po >vor expected from Manga hao. Private enterprise, the Government and the municipalities are all in the business. Many people have taken power from the Doal river, and the municipality of Stockholm, has now taken about all that was left by building dam walls and embankments to the length of about ten miles, a triumph of engineering. Hydro-electric power is largely used in the paper pulp industry, and Mr Ballinger saw twice the power of the Wellington City Council’s electric lighting station turned on to one pulp vat. A remarkable development at Malmoe is the using of hydro-electrical current for generating steam in the daytime. Hydro-electrical power is fully employed at night. It has little use, and is therefore cheap, so at night the current is applied directly to water and the steam generated is stored in accumulators!. This accumulated steam is used for power purposes in the daytime, when the hydro-electrical power is otherwise employed. To people whose attention has been concentrated on the .duel between hydro-electricl power and the electrical power derived from coal pnd steam, this Swedish device may come as a surprise. Here is electrical current taking the place of coal i as a generator of steam power. Countries that have no coal, or which have a particular need to conserve their coal, may well prolong their steam age Ky using hydro-electricity as the primary power.