Reheat steam turbines became the norm in the 1930s, when unit ratings soared to a 300-MW output level. In the 1920s, another technological boost came with the advent of once-through boiler applications and reheat steam power plants, along with the Benson steam generator, which was built in 1927. The demonstration of pulverized coal steam generators at the Oneida Street Station in Wisconsin in 1919 vastly improved coal combustion, allowing for bigger boilers (Figure 2). By the 1910s, the coal-fired power plant cycle was improved even more by the introduction of turbines with steam extractions for feedwater heating and steam generators equipped with air preheaters-all which boosted net efficiency to about 15%. By the early 1900s, coal-fired power units featured outputs in the 1 MW to 10 MW range, outfitted with a steam generator, an economizer, evaporator, and a superheater section. Sir Charles Parsons, who built the first steam turbine generator (with a thermal efficiency of just 1.6%) in 1884, improved its efficiency two years later by introducing the first condensing turbine, which drove an AC generator. The first coal-fired steam generators provided low-pressure saturated or slightly superheated steam for steam engines driving direct current (DC) dynamos. Hydropower, for example, marked several milestones between 18 in Oregon, Colorado, Croatia (where the first complete multiphase AC system was demonstrated in 1895), at Niagara Falls, and in Japan.īy then, however, coal power generation’s place in power’s history had already been firmly established. Department of EnergyĪdvances in alternating current (AC) technology opened up new realms for power generation. Thomas Edison in September 1882 achieved his vision of a full-scale central power station with a system of conductors to distribute electricity to end-users in the high-profile business district in New York City. Eventually, Thomas Edison invented a less powerful incandescent lamp in 1879, and in September 1882-only a month before the inaugural issue of POWER magazine was published-he established a central generating station at Pearl Street (Figure 1) in lower Manhattan.ġ. Brush had developed and begun selling the most reliable dynamo design to that point, and a host of forward thinkers were actively exploring the promise of large-scale electricity distribution. Varley nearly simultaneously devised the “self-exciting dynamo-electric generator.” Perhaps the most important improvement then arrived in 1870, when a Belgian inventor, Zenobe Gramme, devised a dynamo that produced a steady direct current well-suited to powering motors-a discovery that generated a burst of enthusiasm about electricity’s potential to light and power the world.īy 1877-as the streets of many cities across the world were being lit up by arc lighting (but not ordinary rooms because arc lights were still blindingly bright)-Ohio-based Charles F. In 1867, Werner von Siemens, Charles Wheatstone, and S.A. Antonio Pacinotti improved it to provide continuous direct current power by 1860. Invention of the first rudimentary dynamo is credited to Frenchman Hippolyte Pixii in 1832. In 1820, in arguably the most pivotal contribution to modern power systems, Michael Faraday and Joseph Henry invented a primitive electric motor, and in 1831, documented that an electric current can be produced in a wire moving near a magnet-demonstrating the principle of the generator. That development is said to have inspired Benjamin Franklin’s famous experiments, as well as the invention of the battery by Italy’s Alessandro Volta in 1800, Humphry Davy’s first effective “arc lamp” in 1808, and in 1820, Hans Christian Oersted’s demonstration of the relationship between electricity and magnetism. Many accounts begin power’s story at the demonstration of electric conduction by Englishman Stephen Gray, which led to the 1740 invention of glass friction generators in Leyden, Germany.
The history of power generation is long and convoluted, marked by myriad technological milestones, conceptual and technical, from hundreds of contributors. These are some of the events that have shaped both the history of power and the history of POWER. During its 138-year history, the magazine’s pages have reflected the fast-changing evolution of the technologies and markets that characterize the world’s power sector.
POWER magazine was launched in 1882, just as the world was beginning to grasp the implications of a new, versatile form of energy: electricity.
0 kommentar(er)
