Chapter 1301 - Song of Electricity (Part 1)

This meant the second document nullified the first. The reason for going through all this trouble was that, in Wei Aiwen's view, Huang Xiong's problem wasn't getting involved with women—it was getting involved with women while executing combat operations, even bringing persons of unknown origin into the camp for extended stays, creating unnecessary risks for the military and the transmigrators. Therefore, the handling had to be clear in both reward and punishment, achieving the effect of "curing the illness to save the patient" while serving as a warning to those who might follow.

He signed both documents. Then on a "Promotion Roster," he crossed out Huang Xiong's name and added a note: "Delay by six months."

"He can wait for the next promotion opportunity," Wei Aiwen thought.

Next, he drafted an official communication to the Ministry of Health, requesting that the Venereal Disease Prevention and Treatment Division examine forty-three personnel from the former Northern Expedition Detachment's Buddha Hand Bay Squad who were about to be transferred to the White Horse units. Anyone with a venereal disease was to be kept in hospital for treatment. The other twelve, who had not participated, would continue to serve in the regular forces.

At eight o'clock in the morning, Transmigrator Liu Tangmu stepped out of his rickshaw and, carrying his briefcase, walked into the Lingao Power Company Dispatch Center located at Bairren Hydroelectric Station. This was the nerve center of Lingao's seventeenth-century power grid—classified as a "Category One Priority Protection Target." Not only were the power station and dispatch room surrounded by high walls and barbed wire, but even outside the walls stretched a full fifty-meter-wide "restricted zone." Any native or unauthorized naturalized citizen was forbidden from entering the area marked by bamboo fencing, or the soldiers in the guard towers had authority to shoot to kill on sight.

Given the transmigrators' aversion to waste, the restricted zone also served as a vegetable garden. However, only the "most reliable" soldiers of the Lingao Garrison Battalion were permitted to enter for planting and harvesting.

Transmigrator Liu Tangmu gave a huge yawn, fished his special access pass to the Dispatch Center from his pocket, showed it to the soldier standing guard—a member of the Lingao Garrison Battalion—and entered the Dispatch Center.

One wall of the dispatch room was fitted with an analog display board showing the currently operating hydroelectric and thermal generator units. Pointer gauges on the board displayed real-time voltage and current at key points throughout the grid. The duty naturalized electrician watched these readings and occasionally recorded data.

Liu Tangmu first flipped through the duty logs and operating data tables from the previous night. Everything appeared normal. He then walked into the Chief Duty Room, exchanged greetings with the transmigrator on night shift, and signed the handover record to complete the shift change.

On the office desk sat an industrial computer—one of the power monitoring systems assembled using equipment brought from the old timeline. The screen constantly displayed the current status of generating equipment and the operating status of both 10KV transmission lines. Compared to the analog board outside, this system was far more advanced. First, the system displayed digital values, far more accurate than the pointer gauges outside. The pointer gauges had limited graduation marks, and the pointers constantly fluctuated—readings could only give rough approximations. Second, the system had statistical functions, recording voltage and current fluctuation ranges for every fifteen-minute interval—something human recording could hardly match. The storage space required for system-recorded data was minimal; it could store decades' worth with no problem, and retrieving records was a hundred times more convenient than paper log sheets. Most importantly, the system could generate various load curve graphs, which were far more intuitive than data tables.

In the old timeline, Liu Tangmu had worked in power automation. After the transmigration, he became one of the directors of the Lingao Power Company Dispatch Center. Same person, same equipment as the old timeline—only now he had gone from contractor to client, truly matching his professional specialty. But the equipment from the old timeline was excellent yet finite in service life. Internally, the Power Company estimated this equipment could last five years, then backup equipment could sustain them for another five years. As for what would happen after ten years—no one could say. So the Dispatch Center's operations were built on traditional technology: the old-fashioned pointer gauges and recording boards in the outer room.

Don't let these crude-looking traditional devices fool you—just the manufacturing costs had made the Planning Commission weep blood. Processing capacity in the Council's industrial system was so excessive it was redundant, but material shortages were cripplingly severe. To ensure performance, many components that in the old timeline would have been made from different steel grades or cheap metals or composites were now manufactured from premium materials—with copper alloy being the least expensive.

Liu Tangmu reviewed the load curves, which matched reasonably well with the recorded data from outside. He then checked the fault log—it was empty, indicating no faults had occurred. He let out an involuntary sigh of relief: another night at Lingao Power had passed safely.

Liu Tangmu was perpetually terrified of the word "fault." On one hand, he had long been a contractor, and whenever a fault occurred, the client would inevitably summon them for a thorough tongue-lashing. On the other hand, though he was now the client in this timeline, there was no contractor to tongue-lash. Once a fault occurred, what was damaged was usually a Category One or Category Two "controlled resource." Given the Council's current industrial capability, repair was basically impossible—only the salvage value of parts and raw materials remained. In a timeline where even transmission cables couldn't be manufactured locally, everyone understood how serious damaging a piece of electrical equipment would be.

From D-Day to the present—over three years now—Lingao Power had existed in an almost-forgotten limbo. At the beginning, Chang Kaishen still sat atop the Energy Committee, but he soon discovered it was entirely a bit part. After the Bairren Rapids hydroelectric station and Bopu thermal station were successively completed, the Power sector's daily work was reduced to operations and maintenance. Since both power sources and users were quite weak, large grid effects couldn't be achieved. Though they had brought along some power dispatching equipment, most locations had no automation systems to assist—this thankless work soon left the Power sector's young lords dispirited. They scattered: some joined the Army and Navy, others transferred to the Planning Commission... In the blink of an eye, only the original Energy Minister Chang Kaishen and a few "technical elites" he had desperately retained remained—Liu Tangmu being one of them.

Chang Kaishen too had grown dispirited. After dividing the major work blocks among his few generals, he began ignoring power matters entirely. This was because the power shortfall couldn't be remedied in the short term. The Planning Commission's energy policy focused entirely on "steamification" and "gasification."

Steam engines, boilers, and gasifiers sprouted like bamboo shoots after spring rain in every corner of Lingao. Coal demand far exceeded electricity demand, and so Minister Chang's main energy was devoted to coal logistics coordination, gradually becoming an expert in logistics.

After suffering such a setback, the Power sector inevitably experienced several accidents of varying severity, even burning out one 10KV transformer. The 10KV line from Bairren Rapids to Bopu was taken out of service. That burned transformer had been destroyed when the generators on both ends went into parallel operation and Bopu suddenly lost power, failing to shed load in time. In fact, linking two sets of machinery with such different operating characteristics while supplying power to two locations with vastly mismatched loads far exceeded the capabilities of the Council's industrial system. Though the Power sector had people who had repaired power stations, people who had worked in grid dispatch, people who had written smart grid papers, and even people who had designed unmanned substations, none of this meant they could quickly sort out a grid composed of various electric motor users that started and stopped frequently.

As the saying goes, a desperate situation brings revival. The remaining few, with no one to rely on but themselves, picked up their old professional textbooks, searched the Grand Library for materials, and after diligently recording over a year's worth of various data and continuously coordinating with the factories, finally stabilized power station operations. By 1630, Lingao's power generation enterprise had finally gotten on track. The Power sector even had the capacity to train several naturalized citizens to assist in manning the stations.

In the subsequent years, the Power Company successively installed several more hydroelectric generating units and made certain improvements to existing equipment—primarily "steamifying" and "gasifying" the prime movers of the original locomobile generators and diesel generators to suit local conditions.

The Lingao Power Company had thus barely maintained the operation of this small-scale 10KV grid and two parallel power stations up to the present day.

Liu Tangmu thought: our presence in the entire system here is practically negligible. With this grey mood, he walked back to the outer room and signed the previous night's duty log. The naturalized electricians who had worked the night shift could now go off duty.

Liu Tangmu then went to inspect the machine room at the hydroelectric station adjacent to the Dispatch Center. The Bairren Hydroelectric Station's units had been expanded to three 200KW hydro-turbine generators, for a total capacity of 600KW. This was currently the mainstay of Lingao's power supply. Of the units brought from the old timeline, two more remained uninstalled—they would have to wait until the Wenlan River improvement project was fully completed.

The machine room seemed normal at a glance. All the hydroelectric generators were running, humming away. He wasn't trained in power generation, so he really had no expertise in this—purely routine rounds, at most listening for unusual sounds. The duty naturalized worker respectfully brought over the duty log. He looked it over: inspections and maintenance had all been performed on schedule, and generator output voltage was relatively stable. He signed the log.

Finally, he went to the Power Engineering Team, preparing to lead a patrol.

The naturalized electricians scheduled for patrol that day had formed up at the entrance, then under Liu Tangmu's observation, tested their voltage detectors and donned the necessary protective equipment.

Liu Tangmu put on his hard hat, surveyed the naturalized electricians in their rattan helmets, work uniforms, and canvas bags, and raised one hand in a shout:

"Safety first, prevention foremost! Life is precious, safety comes first!"

The electricians raised their arms in unison and responded: "Safe production is everyone's responsibility! Follow regulations, maintain discipline, ensure safety!"

(End of Chapter)