Coulee's Watts

The Colorado River's Boulder Dam has six giant generators which turn out 82.500 kilowatts each. Among hydroelectric turbine machines, these hold a record for power. But Westinghouse Electric & Manufacturing Co. pointed out last week that "records don't last long among water wheels." The company has started work on three generators rated at 108,000 kilowatts apiece.

These are for Washington's Grand Coulee, biggest engineering enterprise in history, and will get into action in 1941. They will weigh 960 tons each, measure 48.5 ft. across as against the Boulder Dam generators' 40 ft.

Standard method for lubricating the bearings of big waterpower generators is to keep oil moving under forced circulation between the bearings and a cooling system which keeps the oil from overheating. The bearings of the Grand Coulee monsters will operate in a bath of oil containing its own cooling system in the form of immersed water pipes. Thus water will be pumped but no oil--cutting down piping and maintenance costs and reducing leakage hazards.

The U. S. produced 44 billion kilowatt-hours of hydroelectricity in 1938. Potential maximum of all practicable waterpower sites has been estimated around 325 billion kwh. Though completion of the New Deal's dam program will not harness all this, experts foresee a big surplus over municipal and irrigation power needs. They also claim they know how to mop it up--build electrochemical factories near damsites, with hungry electricity-eaters like furnaces to produce calcium carbide (from limestone and coal electrically heated to 4,000DEG F.), acetylene, alcohol, acetone, fertilizers, insecticides, plastics. One modern, three-electrode calcium carbide furnace requires 225,000 amperes--enough current to light a million and a half household lamps.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.