Powerhouse Again
I try visiting the powerhouse again today. Was hoping to catch up the tour guide (11:am, 13:pm) but arrived at 14:00.
The guide, Wendy, a great human being, also an on site researcher on the subject, seeing my disappointment. Give me a 90 minutes 1 on 1 guide toward the hydro power plant.
It’s a very exciting learning exercise that we can try our best to understand a subject within a short period of time.
Some of the knowledge also inspired my engineering thinking.
Here are the brief notes on the important things.
Notes
- Initial build with 1 generator is fast, unlike most of the Canadian working speed, it took around half a year from having only penstocks with no building at all to a fully funcitonal power plant. No union back then?
- The additional generators (4th generator functioning on 1921, 10 years after the 1st), each incremental turbine x generator sounds like a financial struggle.
- Very LIMITED/ almost NONE documentation. It’s not SPQR, only a century old, but the entire preserving of how this power plant work feels like an archeology effort. As Wendy described, her job involves “Look at things for hours and ponder what they do”. Although she had the chance to talk to some of the worker, but many of the knowledge of how all these delicate machinery works is lost. Engineers don’t like documentation work, it’s accross industries and generations. All suppliers who offered parts accross the century are gone now.
- For some of the position that might involve injury and other accidents ( scary stuff happen when standing next to high voltage ). The company might hire more expendible personnel for such line of work as talented experts are hard to find/ replace. This feels almost like the purpose of establishing SAT during WWII
- The power plant building is a Faraday cage. Clearly the neighbouring community can feel much safer that way. The only down side is bad phone reception.
- The place is kept running until 2000 March to prevent possible Y2K problem, because it is one of the old design that can do a black start(water is all it need to start every thing.) so it can handle dooms day scenario like Y2K.
- The working condition is horrible, extremely loud and 130F to 140F when running. Worker lost hearing, and consider the deafness badge of honor (only male workers on the factory)
- Turbines made in Switzerland but generator was made in Canada.
- AC was generated in exiter and transformed into DC, DC was pump into generator to make electrical magnetic fields, the. Generating AC for public
- Communication within factory is a challenge, usually hand signals.
- Some operation might lead to sparks that can blind people. Me & Wendy both guessed someone was actually blinded for people to know about this.
Now to consider all that electricity service isn’t as expensive when scaled up by capitalism like this.
To the great prowess of human engineering, all the efforts and sacrifices that empowered this modern world.