Power generation

“ But among all these many departments of research, these many branches of industry, new and old, which are being rapidly expanded, there is one dominating all others in importance — one which is of the greatest significance for the comfort and welfare, not to say for the existence, of mankind, and that is the electrical transmission of power. ”

“ Thus they will shortly be in complete control of the hydro-electric and superpower field in America and controlling the power they will control every phase of modern civilization. For electricity is the power of the future. For the home, for industry, transportation, mining and for agriculture—electricity from now on is the one absolute essential. He who controls the power controls all.
Hence the commanding need for public ownership in this larger field. ”

“ And now, electricity—this mysterious agent-has multiplied the muscular strength of man a billion times. The tasks of Hercules are now but chores to be accomplished by the closing of a switch. Mighty rivers roar through intake and turbine to drive the wheels of industry in a distant city and turn the night into day. Any attempt to chronicle all the applications of this wondrous power would be absurd. Such is electricity to-day. ”

“ If the public understood that electricity is Energy and that it is transmutable at will {258} into Power or Light or Heat, they would better realize the possibilities of the future in town and country, and all that the proper organization and control of Energy means to them. They would at once resolve that the power of government must not be divorced from the Power which will run in the electrical mains of the future, and by the aid of which we can transform the face of our land. ”

“ By means of electricity the work, not only of factories, but also of the home and the farm may be done in any place where electricity can be installed. We must bear in mind that electricity is never a source of power, but is only the agent that carries power to the user. The source of all electric power is either steam or water, produced by water-wheels, turbines, steam-engines or gas-engines. The economical way to furnish electric power is to establish central power plants, and electricity may be conveyed from them for many miles. ”

“ It is obviously clumsy to create power in the first instance, convert power into electricity (I use popular language) , and then convert electricity back again into power. Much more hopeful than any idea of developing that method would be the conception of new ways of creating and applying motive-power directly. But, almost certainly, electricity, obtained in some new way, will do the work of the world for many generations yet—until, in fact, we devise or discover something more convenient. ”

“ I believe that the time is coming, though we may not live to see it, when that mysterious power or force, used now only for telegraphy, will eventually supply the power for running railroad trains and steamships, for lighting, and, in a word, electricity will do all the work of the world. ”

“ Since we are going into this work as pioneers, we shall have to be dependent upon our own efforts for the production of the electrical apparatus, so as to be able, with our home-made factory, to provide the power, the heat and the electricity. ”

“ We shall have no need to transmit power in this way. We shall have no need to transmit power at all. Ere many generations pass, our machinery will be driven by a power obtainable at any point of the universe. ”

“ I am aware that this view is not that of a practical engineer, but neither is it that of an illusionist, for it is certain, that power transmission, which at present is merely a stimulus to enterprise, will some day be a dire necessity. ”

“ Owing to the high relative cost of electric power when generated in small amounts and the great advantages of generating it in proximity to coal mines and waterfalls, the supply of electric power in bulk to small towns and manufacturing districts has become a great feature in modern electrical engineering. ”

“ For here we have not only the dynamo, motors, and transformers that he gave freely to the world, not only the alternating-current transformer, and the system of transmission of power, but we even find that the principal consumers of the enormous electric power produced are employing it in carrying on some of the many processes in electro-chemistry, a science that he had done so much to advance. ”

“ A great deal is being spoken of substituting steam plant by electricity, and of utilising waterfalls, etc., for obtaining electric motor power. In order to distribute correctly the electrical energy obtained, it is of course necessary to estimate, weigh and measure where and how much of this energy is to be directed, so as to derive the greatest possible advantage therefrom. ”

“ Young Halsey, dull white, simply sat staring at him as he went on.
"We all know what the old ideas of fuel and power are—they're obsolete. Electricity is the power of the future, the power of to-day. Speed, speed, speed is what we want. Power, power, power is what every industry needs, as well as what every man craves. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Nikola Tesla replies as follows in regard to an inquiry on the subject of the future of electricity: "The transmission of power has interested me not only as a technical problem, but far more in its bearing upon the welfare of mankind. ”

“ The agent that appears to be the most suitable, and that gives promise of utility in other directions as well, is electricity. Distributed from a central source of supply, all the advantages of a safe and convenient power would be obtained, without any of the disadvantages attendant upon the use of other forms of energy. ”

“ When one stands on the bank of the river and sees the great waterfall as it plunges over the precipice, exerting a force of from five to ten million horse-power, one is overwhelmed in contemplation of its possibilities as a source of energy that may be converted into work, mechanical and chemical, through the medium of electricity.
The genius of man has devised a way by which some of this constantly wasting energy may be converted into electricity and distributed to different points to perform various kinds of work. ”

“ Further applications are now being studied, but the cost of direct conversion appears too great to permit its general use for electric power in the near future. Direct techniques will be used first where their special advantages outweigh higher cost. ”

“ Choose wisely for quarters where you will have a large supply of food, water and fuel (whether you use atomic energy, electricity, oil, or even the old-fashioned coal) . I advise all electrical power stations to be used as stations of supply, and the men working there will be the real heroes who will save the members of their respective communities. Those who possess atomic heat machines are indeed fortunate. ”

“ As a partial offset to the low cost of the continuous-current generators and to the absence of transformers, there is the necessity for motor-generators in a sub-station when current for lighting as well as power is to be distributed. ”

“ How vast and yet easily controlled a power this would be in the hands of those who were able to wield it, may be guessed from the fact that, in the present day, less than ten per cent. of the latent energy of coal is developed as electrical power even in the most perfect systems of conversion. ”

“ Develop, operate and/or coordinate transnational power systems, or networks of small units, integrating into the systems or networks power derived from the sun, wind, water, tides, heat differentials, magnetic forces, and any other source of safe, ecologically sound and continuing energy supply. ”

“ The ultimate source of power is always either a steam-engine or a waterfall. A few lecture-table toys and the like are the only existing examples of machinery in which the actual source of power is electricity. Even here, it may be objected, the actual source of power is not electricity, but chemical action in the battery. But no contrivance of man is an ultimate source of power. Even a steam-engine is only a device for utilising the stored solar energy of coal. Of course man can no more create power than he can create matter: the stock of each in the universe is a fixed quantity. ”

“ It is not enough to develop appliances by means of which such a transmission can be effected. The machinery must be such as to allow the transformation and transmission, of electrical energy under highly economic and practical conditions. Furthermore, an inducement must be offered to those who are engaged in the industrial exploitation of natural sources of power, as waterfalls, by guaranteeing greater returns on the capital invested than they can secure by local development of the property. ”

“ Five kilometers from Coldfield, construct and operate a simplified fusion-based energy generating and power transmission system to provide sufficient output to support all anticipated power and network requirements of the planet ”

“ When it comes to transmission of electricity across the power grid, so that when one region is experiencing an electricity shortfall and people may suffer blackouts, another region can pick up the slack -- another region of the nation can pick up the slack and send the energy across the grid. ”

“ Franklin's experiments in electricity were followed at once by the common lightning-rod, but a century passed before the electrical power was utilized, and made subservient, in some degree, to the control of men. ”

“ Remember, in estimating the size of your plant for light, heat, and power, that it does not have to be big enough to use all the devices at one time. Also remember, that two water horsepower to one electrical horsepower is a very liberal allowance; and that a generator working under one-half or two-thirds capacity at normal loads will require less attention than a machine constantly being worked above its capacity. Therefore, let your generator be of liberal size, because the difference in cost between a 5 and 10 kilowatt machine is not in proportion to their capacity. ”

“ Before we arrive, therefore, at the point of using electricity as a source of power in itself, our mechanicians will have plenty to occupy them in the task of devising safer and more convenient methods of transmitting force, and even at the end of the century, supposing the use of electricity not to have been entirely superseded by the discovery of some entirely new force as yet not even conceivable, invention will doubtless be still busy with further improvements in the transmission as well as in the production of electricity. ”

“ Thus we have in a period of less than forty years the most remarkable and unprecedented change in industry, which has never been exceeded in importance even by the introduction of the gasoline-engine and electrical power. ”

“ Suppose there is a powerful steam-engine which is able to do for you a year's work in a day: it is a reservoir of power, but the power is conditioned upon the exercise of a lower power; you must bring coals and fetch water and make up fire, and by and by the power becomes accessible to you. ”

“ The production and distribution of light, heat and power simply mean the production and distribution of energy in the form we call electricity, and since transport is simply motion we see that the future of lighting, heating, transport and power is the future of electricity. ”

“ Springer manifested a comprehensive grasp of the various enterprises located there with a view toward centralization, and consequently increased the general efficiency, furnishing light, heat, steam, and power, night and day, summer and winter In the early seventies and eighties power was furnished by means of rope transmission, which method was followed in the nineties by an electric plant, generating electricity for motor power and lighting purposes. ”

“ Of the feasibility of economically distributing the electric current there is a growing confidence among electricians, and the advantages of so transmitting power have been frequently urged of late, not only for moving light machinery, but for doing all the work now done in our factories by the steam-engine. ”

“ The electric system, in which power is generated at a central source and distributed to cars which take power in proportion to the work being done, possesses a higher degree of flexibility, convenience and economy than any other system. ”

“ It is now so easy to introduce the electric wire and a small electric motor into the household or the shop adjoining the household and to so operate small machines for the various processes in many of the manufacturing industries, that this new use of electricity for the transmission of power is already making visible changes in the factory systems of the world, and promises still greater changes. ”

“ For a shop on a small scale, wherever it may be, it is cleaner, less troublesome and cheaper to use electric power than it is to use gas or steam power.
Should you intend to operate on a very large scale it may then be to your advantage to look up a place where there is water power, or if your industry is one that calls for the large use of electricity you would then be justified in moving to Niagara Falls, or some other place where there are great hydro-electric plants. ”

“ In those places where water power was utilized for distributing electric power in the villages, and in those cities where the machinery used for producing electric light during the night hours was utilised for supplying motive power during the day, the small industries are taking a new development. ”

“ The people of this far away orb have greatly surpassed us in controlling and utilizing the three distinct forces which are quite similar to electricity, and these are the wizard forces that furnish the power used to drive the motors and engines, not only of the floating cities, but also of the fixed abodes. ”