Article April 24, 1902 Issue

Electric Generators for Canadian Power Co.

Boston Transcript

THE Canadian Niagara Power Company, it is announced by the Electrical World and Engineer, has just awarded to the General Electric Company contracts for three immense units of ten thousand horse-power each. This contract marks marks the beginning of the development of plans for the utilization of the immense power on the Canadian side of Niagara. The new machines will be the largest electric generators ever built. These gigantic generators are but the the first units in a plant which will probably reach an aggregate of two hundred thousand horse-power or more within a very few years. The power-house is to be situated on the flat land adjacent to the Dufferin Islands near the river, less than a quarter of a mile above the Horseshoe Falls. A wheel-pit is being excavated in the rock, which will be connected by a tunnel tail-race to the gorge below the falls. The dynamos will be placed at the surface level as before, being connected to the turbines by long, vertical shafts, which extend to the bottom of the pit, where the turbines will be situated.

The macines are also remarkable on account of the high speed at which they will operate,—two hundred and fifty revolutions per minute, the same as that now used with the smaller five thousand horse-power generators on the American side. A design has been provided which affords the best electrical conditions and a very compact form. The external diameter of these machines will be not quiteeighteen eighteen feet, and the total weight of each about four hundred thousand pounds. They will will return ninety-eight per cent of the shaft horse-power in the form of current, and the inherent regulation will be such that the voltage variations will not exceed eight per cent, with maximum possible changes of load. Two very important elements, are that the machines will have internal revolving fields, while the older smaller machines have external fields; and that they will not depend on transformers for raising the pressure of the current from twenty-two hundred to about five times that figure for the line, but will generate themselves current at the tremendous potential of twelve thousand volts, thus dispensing entirely with expensive transforming apparatus.

The adoption of these enormous units in place of the large five thousand horse-power generators previously the standard at Niagara Falls, is the result of recommendations made by the General Electric Company's engineers, and effects an immense saving in the cost of this power development. It reduces the wheel-pit in excavation and the size of the power-house to about one half, causes a very large reduction in the cost of electrical apparatus per horse-power, and sacrifices sacrifices absolutely nothing in reliability or efficiency.

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