Concentration of electricity production in the late XIX - early XX century

The transition to the three-phase alternating current technique and the solution of the problem of the transmission of electric energy over considerable distances allowed a dramatic increase in the use of electric power in industry, in transport and in everyday life. In the second half of the 90-ies of the XIX century. In all advanced capitalist countries, the construction of electric power stations was widely developed. By 1900, world electricity production had already reached 15 billion kWh.

Gradually, DC power plants, occupying a dominant position at the initial stage of electrification development, were replaced by three-phase current installations. The creation of ever more powerful power plants was dictated by the conditions of economy. It was advantageous to build them at the site of fuel extraction or near the sources of water energy, and transmit the generated energy through high voltage lines to industrial regions and cities. Such power stations, called district ones, began to appear at the end of the last century.

The first district power plant was a hydroelectric power station in the United States on the river. Niagara. Its electrical part was made biphase in the Tesla system. The station with a capacity of 37,000 kW - a grandiose structure for that time - was opened in 1896.

Energy from Niagara HPP was used mainly for electrochemical and electrothermal industries - for plants for the production of carborundum, calcium carbide, aluminum. The operation of the HPP showed its high efficiency and could serve as a basis for further large hydroelectric construction.

At the end of the last century, several more powerful hydraulic and thermal power plants were built: in Obersprey, near Berlin (1897), Reinfeld hydroelectric station (1898), Baku oilfields (1899), etc.

The construction of district power stations was widely developed at the beginning of the 20th century. Exclusively using a three-phase system of currents. The main technical direction in electrical construction is the concentration of electricity production.

This process was particularly rapid in Germany and the United States. In Germany there was a significant quantitative growth of district power stations, accompanied by an increase in their capacity. Since 1900, for 10-12 years, the capacity of individual power plants has increased from 200 to tens of thousands of kilowatts. For example, the Goldenberg station before the First World War had four generators of 15 thousand kW.

The process of concentration of electricity production was most rapid in the USA. By 1914, the two largest stations of the country, the company Edison and Niagara HPP produced in the year 2020.6 million kWh, ie, almost the same as all the stations in Russia combined.

The first district power station of Russia "White coal" was built in 1903 on the river Podkumok near Yessentuki. It fed electricity to the city of the mineral water group on four air three-phase lines with a voltage of 8 kV and had a small power.

A larger power transmission station was built in 1914 in Bogorodsk (now Noginsk) for electricity supply to Moscow. At the station, three turbogenerators were installed at 5,000 liters each. from. It was the largest power plant in the world, working on peat. The power of the capital's power plants was growing. At the end of 1916 the power of the St. Petersburg power plant "Society of Electric Lighting of 1886" was approaching 50 thousand kW.

Among the district power stations in the early XX century. Great importance was acquired by hydroelectric power stations, especially in the USA, France, Italy, Sweden, Norway. In the United States, in particular, the share of hydroelectric power in the total production of electricity was 32% in 1912. Thermal power plants often served only as a reserve for work during low water levels. Exception was represented by Germany, where steam stations dominated near the brown coal deposits dominated.

But although the advantages of centralized power generation became apparent as early as the end of the nineteenth century, the consolidation of power plants was a gradual process.

Along with powerful "electricity factories" for a long time, numerous small power stations continued to exist. They released energy to consumers through cable and air networks on generator voltage. For example, many Swedish and Norwegian hydropower plants that supplied nearby electrochemical and electrometallurgical plants (not more than 4-5 km away) had no boost transformers and operated at a voltage of 3,000 to 11,000 V. Before the First World War, London, For example, received electricity from dozens of power plants.

The trend of centralization of power supply was clearly manifested in the Russian conditions. In the past, centralization began in Moscow and adjacent industrial suburbs. Low-power small stations were absorbed by the Moscow central station of the Society for Electric Lighting in 1886: for 17 years, from 1897 to 1913, 286 block stations were closed in Moscow. But the disunity of small power plants has not been overcome for many years.

The next step on the path of concentrating electricity production was the combination of separate stations in parallel running. The very idea of ​​combining electric power generators arose in the period of the domination of direct current. The inclusion of direct current into parallel operation of power plants was not difficult, if these stations had the same voltage and were not far from each other. But at some distance the low voltage did not allow to connect the stations directly to the DC transmission line. In such cases, they resorted to converting a direct current into an alternating voltage, introducing engine-generator or, as they were then called, motor-generator sets.

The unification of three-phase power plants was accompanied by the overcoming of serious technical difficulties, of which the most important was the observance of synchronous operation of the generators. In the early AC power plants, all the generators worked in isolation, feeding each of their customers. But by the 90s of the last century, attempts have been made to create conditions for parallel work. So, in 1896, at the Okhta hydroelectric power station (St. Petersburg), the engineers VN Chikolev and RE Klasson developed a synchronizing device to include two generators for parallel operation.

One of the first associations of two three-phase current stations was conducted in Switzerland in 1892: power plants in Gladfelden (120 kVA) and in Gokhfelden (360 kVA), connected by a two-kilometer line with a voltage of 5 kV.

Only after 1900 with the emergence of district stations, the unification of power stations became noticeable. By this time, the advantages of working together were quite clear: the possibility of reducing the power reserve at each power plant separately and repairing equipment without disabling the main consumers, and creating conditions for equalizing the load schedule.

All this allowed more efficient use of energy resources.

In 1905 three large power systems operated in the USA: Southern California (the Edison Company), in the San Francisco and Utah regions. The capacity of the Edison system was 12 thousand kW. It united four hydraulic and four thermal power stations.

By 1914 the power system of the four southern states of the USA (Georgia, North Carolina, South Carolina and Tennessee) united power stations with a total capacity of 230,000 kW. In Germany, the Rhine System operated, which later became the Rhine-Westphalian one, one of the largest in the world.

In Russia, before the Great October Socialist Revolution, there were two small systems; One was on the Apsheron peninsula in the Baku oilfields area, the other united the Moscow city station and the "Power Transmission" station.

The joint work of power plants brought to life the idea of ​​dispatching their control. In this respect, the first association for the parallel operation of stations in Gladfelden and in Gokhfelden {Switzerland) is indicative: the general control of the operation of generators from the control panel of the station in Gokhfelden was adopted. At the control points, special services developed: relay protection, insulation control, lightning protection, etc.

Shukhardin S. "Technology in its historical development"