THE COLLIERY GUARDIAN

AND

JOURNAL OF THE COAL AND IRON TRADES.

Vol. CXV.

FRIDAY, APRIL 19, 1918.

No. 2990.

THE CONSERVATION OF COAL.

A meeting, to which members of the North of Eng-
land Institute of Mining and Mechanical Engineers,
the North-East Coast Institution of Engineers and
Shipbuilders, the Association of Mining Electrical
Engineers, and other technical organisations likely to
be interested had been invited, was held in the lecture
theatre of the North of England Mining Institute on
Monday, April 15, under the auspices of the Newcastle
Section of the Institution of Electrical Engineers, for
the purpose of discussing the report of the Coal Con-
servation sub-committee on Electric Power Supply in
Great Britain. Mr. A. H. Marshall, Middlesbrough,
president of the section, occupied the chair.

The Chairman said that, of all the schemes put for-
ward for reconstruction, none had, to his mind, more
practical value than those comprised in the report.
One measure of their importance was that, by adopting
them, the country would save a sum of upwards of halt
the annual pre-war national expenditure. The report
had its origin in the necessity for conserving the coal
supplies. The economic argument, briefly put, was
that, at present, more than three times as much coal
was being used for the production of power as would
be required if the best commercial engineering methods
were adopted to generate and distribute all such power
electrically. The coal thus saved should be used to
produce further electrical power, which was needed
and would be absorbed to the greatly-enhanced pro-
ductivity of our manufacturers, and there would be
many incidental advantages. The argument did not
rest alone on the assumption that manufacturers would
And it profitable to use more power. It went further,
and asserted that they must do so to enable the country
to hold its own in the markets of the world. The
report discussed the advantages large power stations
had over small. There was no estimate of the con-
sumption of coal per horse-power hour at the pro-
posed super-power stations, but Appendix A gave the
figure of lb., which had been taken for comparison.
The figure seemed to be on the safe side, having in
mind the size of the stations to be constructed. It
would be observed that, while the use of electrical
energy was contemplated for electrical, chemical, and
heating processes as distinct from the production of
motive power, electrical power was taken throughout
the report to cpver all applications of electricity, and
there was no reference to any other than electrical
means for transporting or using the energy in the
coal—that was to say, by either gas, hot water, or
steam. The whole of it was to be dealt with electrically,
and, consequently, only at that efficiency, say 15 to 20
per cent., which obtained in the best modern generating
stations. With the exception of the use of the heat
in exhaust steam under favoured circumstances, there
was no commercial method of which he knew by which
the degraded heat could be of value. Proposals had
been made for setting up small gas plants in resi-
dential neighbourhoods and distributing condenser
cooling water to combine the generation of power with
the supply of heat for domestic purposes; but such
schemes would only add to the difficulties of estab-
lishing what was an eminently practicable and com-
mercial scheme. The financial and political parts of
the scheme were more debatable. Where was the
money to come from directly after the war, when there
would be & sudden drying-up of the present sources
of revenue and a great inflation of prices? How could
capitalists be induced to put enough money into the
business in view of the years of development which
must elapse before there could be any adequate return ?
He did not see how either municipal or private enter-
prise or a combination of both could handle the matter
on a comprehensive scale without national support.
The nation must advance money for a term of years at
a low rate of interest to the bodies set up, however
they were constituted, to assist the creation of such
bodies, and in order that it might exercise control
over what looked like becoming, in the course of time,
a huge national undertaking. There would be special
reasons for Government support during the period of
reconstruction—one being the necessity for providing
employment for discharged soldiers and munition
workers at good wages until such time as industrial
equilibrium was reached, and another the necessity for
promoting every increase of productivity and, conse-
quently, of the competitive strength of the country.

American Power Plants.

Mr. Charles Vernier said it would be necessary
after the war to increase our productivity greatly, and
so increase the national income in order to meet the
war debt. In the main, success would depend upon
the relations between employers and employed. There
must be a fair reward for labour and no restriction of
output. We must introduce more scientific methods
and guard against over-strain of the workers. In th?
past, we had not made the fullest possible use of
labour-saving machinery, with the result that wages
had been loW. We found that, in the United States,
the output per worker in many trades was two to three

times what it was in this country, and the use of power
per worker was about double. The report mentioned
that a saving of some 55 million tons of coal per annum
could be obtained by economical generation of elec-
trical power. That coal would then be available for
export or for the production of about times the
present available amount of power. Our coal resources
were very much nearer exhaustion than those of any
other industrial country, not excepting Germany.
Various estimates had been made of our resources of
coal, varying from 200 to 580 years, which latter figure
was given in the report. The point we had to face was
how long we could get coal at a price which would
enable us to compete with other industrial countries.
America had not only very extensive coal measures
but 40 million horse-power of undeveloped water power.
The price of coal had increased by something like 38 per
cent, in the 13 years ended 1910. Our present methods
of using fuel were wasteful alike of capital, fuel, and
labour. If large units were used, it was possible to
effect very great economies in the amount of fuel
required for each horse-power consumed. Turbo-
generators of 25,000 horse-power used 25 per cent, less
coal per horse-power than did one of 6,000 horse-power.
In the United States they were now building and
installing 50,000, 60,000 and 70,000 kw. machines,
i.e., roughly 100,000 horse-power in one unit. No
manufacturer could possibly employ units of these
dimensions, and very few could use such a size as even
6,000 horse-power. It was not only the economy pos-
sible by large units which enabled power to be supplied
more cheaply by centralised power production; it was
even more essential to distribute over very large areas
to secure the economy from diversity in use. The
various maximum demands of the consumers did not
come on the plant simultaneously, but overlapped and
succeeded one another, so that isolated plants which
were often working at a mere fraction of their maxi-
mum capacity or were actually idle for a great part
of the 24 hours were much more uneconomical than
centralised distribution. Centralised power produc-
tion in large generating units over large areas (several
counties) economised capital in cost of plant and fuel
by the smaller consumption per horse-power possible
with large units, by scientific combustion under expert
direction and by possibility of choosing the most
favourable site for power plant with ample condensing
water. If cooling towers had to be used, fuel con-
sumption was increased by about 15 per cent. The
Dalmarnock Station, for instance, took condensing
water from a canal, and owing to an increase in the
temperature of the canal, the cost of fuel was increased
by £30,000 per annum. The new station, with ample
condensing water, was expected to save £45,000 per
annum in fuel, which would pay the interest on the
new works. There was an economy of labour by saving
the handling and transport of fuel from the pits to
the power plant and in removal of ashes, an economy
of labour in supervision, large units taking little more
labour to operate them than did small and an economy
by the use of automatic coal-handling machinery. The
case for centralised power production and distribution
over large areas was proved up to the hilt, not only
by the results achieved on the north-east coast, but
also by the rapid centralisation of existing plants in
all parts of the world. Without centralisation, that
district could not have achieved its present position
of supplying 350,000 horse-power, with contracts for
further connections of another 40,000 horse-power,
making 390,000 horse-power, which was twice the con-
nected load on the next largest undertaking, viz.,
Manchester. In the U.S.A, three undertakings on*
the Pacific Coast had just combined their several
plants and systems into one unified system covering
40,000 square miles with total generating plants of a
capacity of just over 500,000 horse-power (three-fifths
hydro-electric power, the remainder steam). The
report had been criticised on the ground that the figure
of 51 lb. per horse-power assumed as the average con-
sumption for the whole country was too high. In one
case quoted it was said that a group of textile mills
aggregating 28,000 horse-power had a coal consump-
tion which did not exceed 2| tons of coal per horse-
power. He thought that was quite possible, although
they were not told whether that figure was deduced
from an indicator diagram or from the total coal bill;
knowing the difficulty of estimating horse-power on a
steam plant, he thought they might fairly assume the
former. Whichever it was, however, all the steam
plant in this country was not as efficient as a textile
mill steam-engine, with its beautifully steady and un-
varying load. The report dealt with the average coal
consumption over the whole country for power pur-
poses. Would any one assert that 2| lb., or even'
5 lb., of coal per horse-power was the average figure
with such plants as steam-cranes, locomotives, or
engines in a shipyard, steelworks, mines, etc., inclu-
sive of all stand-by losses when the plant was not in
use? He did not think so; and, in fact, the report
gave the figure of 7 lb. per horse-power from actual
•

figures obtained on the north-east coast. He thought
it was a mistake to advocate the centralisation of
electrical generating plant in large stations of
enormous size which had been called super-stations.
All the essentials could be secured with advantage by
installing one or more of the large units of 25,000,
50,000, or whatever horse-power was adopted, at
intervals of something like 20 to 30 miles, all feeding
into Very high voltage ring mains. That would solve
the difficulties which were bound to be formidable in
the concentration of plants into stations of 100,000,
200,000, or even- 300,000 kw., as had been suggested.
These difficulties included: Finding sufficient con-
densing water at one point for such large plants;
congestion of rail transport facilities for supply
of coal and removal of ashes, as well as of
supply of raw material and finished products
from the works on the site dependent on the electric
supply and raw materials and industrial products from
the w’orks around the power station; and dealing with
the enormous mechanical forces produced in the event
of a short-circuit in or near large stations of hundreds
of thousands of kilowatts capacity. There would be
increased security from air raids, bombardment, etc.,
in the case of scattered units, as against all the plants
being on one site, even if sub-divided in separate
buildings, as mentioned in the report. There would
also be greater security arising from less-congested
outgoing cable routes.

Cost of Electrical Power.

Mr. W. C. Mountain said he was glad to know that
the wasteful production of power in many of our
industries and the consequent saving of coal by adopt-
ing more economical methods either of producing power
or of delivering it to consumers were receiving atten-
tion. A general supply of electrical energy at prices
which would render its use a commercial advantage
to manufacturers and others could not be other than
desirable, nor could anyone possibly claim that the
supply given by the Newcastle Electric Supply Com-
pany and its allied companies was other than satisfac-
tory, but that was only one side of the question. It
was necessary to explain to possible consumers that
the scheme outlined in the report was a gigantic under-
taking which would take many years to accomplish.
Consumers should not be led to believe that such a
source of supply could be obtained within a short period
and thus prevented from making improvements or
additions or embarking on new businesses in which
electrical energy would be required, until such a scheme
as outlined in the report was in successful operation.
He was convinced, from his own actual knowledge,
that there was a very large number of undertakings
in this country which could produce electricity at a
very much lower cost than it could be either produced
or supplied by any power stations installed for a
general supply. With regard to the financial aspect
of the proposed scheme, the public should be advised
what the probable cost of the scheme would be and
where it was proposed to obtain the necessary capital
and upon what terms. Electric power companies in
the United Kingdom had, so far, not been a commercial
success, and unless the commercial prospects of the
undertaking outlined could be clearly demonstrated, a
national expenditure was not justified. An under-
taking of that magnitude would be better managed
by individuals who had a direct interest in the success
of the undertaking than by the Government, but, in
any case, it would mean an enormous and very costly
organisation as regarded staff, and, as the power
stations would be placed at such considerable distances
apart, he was inclined to think that the working costs
and the cost of distribution would probably consider-
ably exceed the scost of working smaller undertakings
conducted on commercial lines. It also appeared to
him that an indication should be given as to the
terms upon which the electrical energy was to be sup-
plied. The present system of charging for current
was very far from satisfactory; but he saw no reason
why, in a large undertaking, a flat rate should not be
quoted, and the consumer would then know exactly
what he was being asked to pay and discounts could
be given varying in proportion to the consumption.
The report did not give definite positions for the instal-
lation of the super-power stations, and it appeared to
him that there would be considerable difficulty in
obtaining a sufficient supply of condensing water in
positions where coal could be readily and cheaply
obtained. That was a point on which it was very
necessary that information should be given, otherwise
it was difficult to consider the value of the scheme.
In the report it was stated that the price of current
supplied by the Newcastle Electric Supply Company
and its allied companies was under one-halfpenny per
unit on the average. That, however, was not borne out
by the charges made to consumers in the district with
which he was associated, and, in his opinion, the state-
ment was misleading. It was quite true that collieries
obtained electric supply for pumping, air-compressing,
and fan-driving at a comparatively low rate, somewhat
approaching the figure named, but the charges made
for the supply given to engineering works, shipyards,