Immense Progress in Recent Years—Greater than Any Other Country: Shanghai Engineer's Interesting Paper Speaking at a meeting of the Engineering Society of China. held Jat the Hotel Plaza on Tuesday, Mr. F. S. Heys said that for many years electricity supply in Great Bri had been developing at a fairly vapid rate, As an example of the rate of growth, the units sold in 1910-11 in what is now known as the London and Home Counties Electricity District totalled about 330 millions, whilst in 1919-20 the corresponding figure was about 620 millions. During the year 1923-4 the total units generated in this District amounted to over 1768!
With the extending use of electrical energy for lighting, industrial, railway and domestic purposes. it had been increasingly evident that the whole system of supply through-Jout the country needed to be reorganized and ce-ordinated. With this end in view the Electricity (Supply) Act 1919, was passed. As. a result of this Act an Electricity 'Commission was appointed to divide the country up into a number of districts and ce-ordinate the supply in each district and in the country sa whole. Any proposed new' electricity supply undertakings had to be submitted to the Commission, whose ennction must be obtained ink before work could be begun.
Asa result of the work of the Commis:
ion, material economies were a pated, and had, indeed, to some Jextent already been realized, Recent Improvements, Speaking on some of the recent Jand noteworthy improvements, Me. Heys made mention of the closed aystem of ventilation in the care generators.. The modern turbo-gen-orator, the speaker said, is cooled by passing air through special ducts in the cores, and it is very desirable that the cooling air should be as clean as possi 1 particular section there would be need for power and the machines the sub-station would be automatically shut down. As soon as 2 train enters a section the con-werters start up and continue to run Jat the proper voltage o long as the train is in that section. The economy in running costs is evident. /Should the converter fail to operate ]properly—even if a bearing becomes Joverheated—-it is automatically shut Jdown and another machine, if there is one in the same station, starts Up and carries the load.
Corporation had installed a plant of this type, a description of which was given in the "Journal of the Institution of Electrical Engineers" of April, 1923. Similgr plants had also been supplied to Manchester, Barrow-in-Furness, Hull, Wellington, N.Z, and Durban.
The first automatic sub-station for railway work in Great Britain was put into. commission last August on the newly opened Edge-ware extension of the London Electric Railway.
Motors and Motor Applications The application of electric drive to many purposes, Mr. Heys said, has made remarkable headway during recent years. The electric. Jdrive of rolling mills has proved advantageous in very way, and all types of mills have been equipped with electric drive, including many reversing mills "requiring from 415,000 to 25,000 H.P. at very low speeds.
Electric haulages and winders ar> now being widely used. Two very interesting winder equipments have focken installed at' a Yorkshire colliery. By this means very rapid Jand exact control is obtained and the widely varying loud is equalized the use of heavy flywheels couped to the generators.
'The quantity of dustin the atmosphere varies considerably different localities, but two mil-grams per cubic' metro may be! taken us a fair basis for considera tion. (A 25,000 K. W. generator requires ubout 70,000 cubic feet of cooling air per minute.) Working continuously throughout the year this quantity of air would contain about two tons of dust per annum. In the past various forms of filters were used; but even the bes filter will allow some dirt to pass through and in the course of time this will aecymulate in the machine und cause overheating and break: down,
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.