Frederick Irving Anderson

“ Electricity is of so much value in farm operations, as well as in the farm house, that the farmer who is not fortunate enough to possess water-power of his own, or to live in a community where a coöperative hydro-electric plant may be established, should not deny himself its many conveniences. In place of the water wheel to turn the dynamo, there is the gasoline engine (or other forms of internal combustion engine using oil, gas, or alcohol as fuel) ; in many districts where steam engines are used for logging or other operations, electricity may be generated as a by-product ”

“ Thus, the farmer who seeks to develop water-power from a stream flowing across his own [Pg 85] land, has the right to divert such a stream from its natural channel—providing it is not a navigable or floatable stream—but in so doing, he must return it to its own channel for lower riparian owners. The generation of water-power does not pollute the water, nor does it diminish the water in quantity, therefore the farmer is infringing on no other owner's rights in using the water for such a purpose. ”

“ Showing the analogy of water to volts and amperes of electricity
The same is true in figuring the power of electricity. We multiply the amperes by the number of electric impulses that are created in the wire in the course of one second. The unit of velocity, or pressure of the electric current is called a volt. Voltage is the pressure which causes electricity to flow. A volt may be likened to the velocity in feet per second of water in falling past a certain point. ”

“ But electricity generated from falling water of a brook meandering across one's acres, comes nearer to the correct answer of how to make something out of nothing. It merely utilizes the wasted energy of water rolling down hill—the weight of water, the pulling power of gravity. ”

“ True, he cannot use more electricity than his plant will produce at any one time,—but it is only by a stretch of the imagination that one may conceive the necessity of using them all at once. Ironing, baking, and the use of small power are usually limited to daylight hours when no lights are burning.
As a matter of fact, this plant has proved satisfactory in every way; and only on one or two occasions have fuses been "blown", and then it was due to carelessness. A modern dynamo is rated liberally. It will stand an overload of as much as 100 per cent for a short time—half an hour or so. ”

“ The farmer who makes use of the energy of falling water to generate electricity for light, heat, and power does the same thing—he makes use of the capacity for work stored in water in being lifted to a certain height. As in the case of the gasoline engine, which burns 14 pounds of air for every pound of gasoline, the engineer of the water-power plant does not have to concern himself with the question of how this [Pg 34] natural source of energy happened to be in a handy place for him to make use of it. ”

“ The sight of a dozen or so fat young horses and mares feeding and frolicking on the wild range of the Southwest would probably inspire the average farmer as an awful example of horsepower running to waste. ”

“ Heating, in any form, by electricity, requires a large amount of current proportionally. As a matter of fact, there is less heat to be had in thermal units from a horsepower-hour of electricity than from three ounces of coal. When one is generating current from water-power, or even direct from gasoline or oil, this is not an argument against electric heating devices. But it becomes a very serious consideration when one is installing a storage battery as the source of current, because of the high initial cost, and depreciation of such a battery. ”

“ For the man who has a small supply of water to run a water wheel a few hours at a time, or who wishes to store electricity while he is doing routine jobs with a gasoline engine or other source of power, the storage battery solves the problem. The storage battery may be likened to a tank of water which is drawn on when water is needed, and which must be re-filled when empty. A storage battery, or accumulator is a device in which a chemical action is set up when an electric current is passed through it. ”

“ After a plant has been in operation a year, the family have discovered uses for electricity which they did not think of in the beginning. For this reason, it is well to put in a plant larger than the needs of the moment seem to require. An electrical horsepower or two one way or another will not greatly change the first cost, and you will always find use for any excess.
Once for all, to settle the question of water-power, the water wheel should be twice the normal capacity of the dynamo it drives, in terms of power. ”

“ It is the purpose of these chapters to awaken the farmer to the possibilities of such small water-power as he or his community may possess; to show that the generating of electricity is a very simple operation, and that the maintenance and care of such a plant is within the mechanical ability of any American farmer or farm boy; and to show that electricity itself is far from being the dangerous death-dealing "fluid" of popular imagination. Electricity must be studied ”

“ Of the light and heat, she will use the lion's share; and for the power, she will discover heretofore undreamed-of uses. So she must be a full partner when it comes to deciding how much electricity they need. ”

“ What a farmer really does in generating electricity from water that would otherwise run to waste in his brook, is to install a private Sun of his own—which is on duty not merely in daylight, but twenty-four hours a day ”

“ A reciprocating steam engine "kicks" a wheel round in a circle by means of steam expanding first in one direction, then in another. A water wheel, on the other hand, is made to revolve by means of the pressure of water—by the constant force of gravity, itself—weight. Weight is something that does not vary from minute to minute, or from one fraction of a second to another. It is always the same. A square inch of water pressing on the blades of a water wheel weights ten, twenty, a hundred pounds, according to the height of the pipe conveying that water from the source of supply, to the wheel. ”

“ A watch is intricate, but so long as we continue to wind it at stated intervals, it keeps time. So with this storage battery plant: so long as Farmer Brown starts his engine to do his farm chores every day, his by-product of electricity is stored automatically.
Such installations are not expensive. A storage battery capable of lighting 8 tungsten lamps, of 16 candlepower each, continuously for 8 hours (or fewer lamps for a longer time) ; a switchboard containing all the required regulating instruments; and a dynamo of suitable size, can be had for from $250 to $300. ”

“ It may be only enough, the greater part of the year, for a "toy" plant—a very practical toy, by the way—one that will keep half a dozen lights burning in the house and barn at one time; under some conditions water may be so scarce that it must be stored for three or four days to get enough power to charge a storage battery for these six or eight lights. A one-quarter, or a one-half kilowatt electrical generator, with a one horsepower (or smaller) wheel, will light a farmstead very satisfactorily—much better than kerosene lamps. ”

“ Water is still water, after it has run through a turbine wheel to turn an electric generator. It is still wet; it is there for watering the stock; and a few rods further down stream, where it drops five or ten feet again, it can be made to do the same work over again—and over and over again as long as it continues to fall, on its journey to the sea. The city of Los Angeles has a municipal water plant, generating 200,000 horsepower of electricity, in which the water is used three times in its fall of 6,000 feet ”

“ In other words the resistance of the pipe to the flow of water determines the amount. If the pipe be the size of a pin-hole, a very small amount of water will escape. If the pipe is as big around as a barrel, a large amount will force its way through. So with electricity. Resistance, introduced in the electric circuit, controls the amount of current that flows. A wire as fine as a hair will permit only a small quantity to pass, under a given pressure. A wire as big as one's thumb will permit a correspondingly greater quantity to pass, the pressure remaining the same. ”

“ This rain, falling on land five, ten, a hundred, a thousand, or ten thousand feet above the sea level, begins to run back to the sea, picking out the easiest road and cutting a channel that we call a brook, a stream, or a river. Our farm lands are covered to an average depth of about three feet a year with water, every gallon of which has stored in it the energy expended by the heat of the sun in lifting it to the height where it is found. ”

“ The great advantage of water-power is that the expense of maintenance—once the plant is installed—is practically nothing. This advantage is offset in some measure by the fact that other forms of power, gas, steam, or windmills, are already installed, in many instances and that their judicious use in generating electricity does not impair their usefulness for the other farm operations for which they were originally purchased. In recent years gasoline engines have come into general use on farms as a cheap dependable source of power for all operations ”

“ The average farmer is too apt to overlook this factor in figuring the cost of machinery of all kinds, and for that reason is unprepared when the time comes to replace worn-out machinery. The dynamo and switchboard should last a lifetime with ordinary care, so there is no depreciation charge against them. The storage battery, a 30-volt, 80-ampere hour installation, should not cost in excess of $100; and, if it is necessary to buy a gasoline engine, a 11⁄4 horsepower engine can be had for $50 or less according to the type. ”

“ A dynamo requires only as much power to drive it, at any given time, as is being used in terms of electricity. There is some small loss through friction, of course, but aside from this the power required of the prime mover (the water wheel) is always in proportion to the amount of current flowing. When water is scarce, and the demands for current for heating are low, it is good practice to close a portion of the buckets of the turbine wheel with wooden blocks provided for this purpose. It is necessary to keep the speed of the dynamo uniform under all water conditions ”

“ Without a stretch of the imagination, we can imagine an ingenious farmer possessing a water-power electric plant building up a thriving business among his less fortunate neighbors, with an "electricity" route. It could be made quite as paying as a milk route.
Connections for charging storage batteries on 110-volt mains
Many communities have water or steam power at a distance too great to transmit 110-volt current by wire economically; and because of lack of expert supervision, they do not care to risk using current at a pressure of 500 volts or higher, because of its danger to human life. ”

“ A twelve-cylinder engine is the prospect for the immediate future.
Since the dynamo that is to supply electric [Pg 222] current direct to lamps requires a steady flow of power, the single-cylinder gas or gasoline engine of the four-cycle type is not satisfactory as a rule. The lights will flicker with every other revolution of the fly wheel. This would be of no importance if the current was being used to charge a storage battery—and right here lies the reason why a cheaper engine may be used in connection with a storage battery than when the dynamo supplies the current direct for lighting. ”

“ Reaction turbines when working under a variable load require water governors (like impulse wheels) although where the supply of water is large, and the proportion of power between water wheel and dynamo is liberal—say two to one, or more—this necessity is greatly reduced. Reaction wheels as a rule govern themselves better than impulse wheels, due both to the fact that they use more water, and that they operate in a small airtight case. The centrifugal ball governor is the type usually used with reaction wheels as well as with impulse wheels. ”