Electrical vs. Rope Transmission of Power. [Volume: 8, Issue: 3, 1889, pp. 201]

No. 3.]

CHARCOAL IRON WORKERS.

201

Electrical vs. Rope Transmission of Power.
Of the several methods of transmitting power to a distance, that
by means of wire ropes has usually been referred to as the most
economical for moderate distances, and the success of the rope
transmission, which for many years has been in operation at the
Falls of Schaffhausen, on the Rhine, has been cited as justifying
this opinion. It seems that hereafter the plant is to furnish a demonstration of the superiority of electric transmission. A correspondent of Industries says that:
"After two years of negotiations, the company who own the
Schaffhausen teledynamic transmission plant have at last succeeded
in overcoming the obstacles, legal and otherwise, which hitherto
stood in the way of an extension of their system, and they are now
erecting five more turbines on the left bank of the Rhine below
those now at work. The water for actuating these turbines will
not be taken from the Rhine fall, but it is part of water now running to waste over a weir of 600 feet in length, the concession for
which was obtained by the company in 1863. Each of the new
turbines will be of 300 horse-power, the total quantity of water
available being 40 tons per second, with a fall of 13 feet. Instead
of using teledynamic transmission, such as is employed in the other
station, the company propose to use electric transmission of energy.
There will be dynamos at the turbine station, and cables stretched
across the river, by which the current will be carried into Schaffhausen, and there used to actuate electromotors."
The substitution of electric transmission for the compressed air
at the Chapin mine, Michigan, is now admitted to be desirable from
an economic standpoint, and this is, with the exception of the Birmingham, England, compressed air system, the largest plant of the
kind in the world.
It would seem, therefore, that electrical transmission of energy
is destined to supersede both wire rope and compressed air transmission, except, possibly, under circumstances which are specially
favorable to the latter while unsuitable to the former. The results
of experiments, as shown by the actual substitution of one system
for the other, outweigh all arguments based on fine mathematical
calculations, or on theoretical deductions, and we, therefore, attach
special importance to this announcement.-Exchange.