Chapter 1304 - Song of Electricity (Part 4)

The biography was quite fleshed out, but reality was rather bare-bones. Faraday claimed to be a direct-line descendant of Fa Zheng, styled Xiaozhi, the Lord of Yihou from the Three Kingdoms era. His father had given him this "riding the coattails of the great" name hoping to restore the Fa family's standing through him. But the name produced no effect beyond drawing startled looks from people throughout his life. He had originally joined the transmigration expedition because he was over thirty and still manning a transformer station in the far suburbs of a third-tier city with absolutely no prospects for advancement or transfer. D-Day opened a door to potentially restoring his ancestors' glory.

Faraday had been researching motors since 1630. Without Planning Commission project approval, it could only count as his "personal research"—nearly every transmigrator engaged in such personal research. After arriving in the new timeline, it seemed everyone wanted to build monuments to themselves or leave something behind to spread their fame to future generations.

However, "personal research" meant no access to Planning Commission-allocated controlled materials or professional equipment usage rights. For transmigrators doing research in humanities or pure theory, this was no issue—the Grand Library's materials were sufficient. But for those needing extensive experimentation, it meant tremendous difficulty: they could only use non-controlled materials. If their personal luggage from the transmigration hadn't included tools and equipment, then using devices and tools was also difficult. Not only did they have to swallow their pride and borrow, but they had to find the right timing—hardly any factory ran less than twenty-four hours.

When Faraday was doing research, he had neither silicon steel sheets nor even the most basic copper wire, enameled wire, or mica paper. He could only content himself with paper studies—calculating formulas and revising drawings, then using wood to make a few models. Later, Dr. Zhong from the Science and Technology Department learned of his predicament and established an "Electric Motor Pre-Research" project for him, finally allowing Faraday to move beyond armchair research.

Using materials procured through the Science and Technology Department, Faraday built several simple motor models—basically the kind you'd make in middle school physics by winding coils yourself, purely to get a feel for things. He also used the Science and Technology Department's computing center to run simulations of his designs. Only after gaining reasonable confidence did he start designing and building his first experimental motor.

The choice of electric motors as the breakthrough point was mainly because motors had the lowest difficulty level within the entire power system. Electric motors were much simpler than generators. Copper winding rolling wasn't very hard; they didn't need complex cooling systems—simple air cooling would do; and the housing could be cast, well within Lingao's current capabilities.

Beyond the stator's copper windings, the most important component in a motor was the soft magnetic material in the rotor. This was an unavoidable obstacle. In the old timeline, this was made using silicon steel sheets. Though anyone with some knowledge of electrical theory knew that theoretically cast iron or cast steel could serve the purpose instead of silicon steel, Faraday's multiple experiments and calculations had revealed that the gap between theory and reality was too large. He had specifically asked transmigrators in materials, structures, and mechanics to run calculations. The conclusion was that if substitute materials were used, the motors produced would be vastly different in size from the blueprints brought from the old timeline at the same power level.

And they had no experience redesigning motors, nor the determination to go all-in on a major effort. The transmigrators' technology-tree-climbing model was roughly a hybrid of Eighth Route Army armaments and Warhammer 40K: on one hand, they diligently sought substitutes compatible with lower technology levels; on the other, whenever possible, they absolutely would not modify original timeline designs—especially the overall design blueprints. The Council actually had very little capacity for technological innovation; they could only replicate as best they could.

After multiple unsuccessful experiments, Faraday concluded that rather than expending vast amounts of energy working around the silicon steel problem, he should tackle the silicon steel material challenge head-on. Otherwise, the follow-on problems from using cast iron or cast steel would be even more complex.

Though smelting silicon steel was quite difficult, the Council had after all built a fairly sophisticated steel industry. Achieving silicon steel production with this industrial system was feasible.

Although working within existing equipment and technology limits meant they could only produce hot-forged silicon steel—which had somewhat different parameters from the cold-forged silicon steel of the old timeline—it was orders of magnitude better than the vast difference with cast iron or cast steel.

That said, Faraday didn't have the authority to demand the steel plant trial-produce silicon steel. He could only raise this issue at the Planning Commission meeting through Dr. Zhong at the Science and Technology Department and wait for it to be "approved" as a Planning Commission project.

Faraday couldn't wait for the Ma'ao Steel Complex to provide him with silicon steel sheets. He filed a report through the Science and Technology Department and obtained a few kilograms of stockpiled silicon steel sheets from the Planning Commission for trials.

After reviewing extensive materials, Faraday concluded that given their current technological and materials science capabilities, they didn't need to start from the lowest-level motors step by step; they could directly adopt mature motors from the old timeline. These motors had ready-made blueprints and process manuals available.

However, trial-producing motors wasn't something he could handle alone, so he brought Qian Liushi in as a partner. After discussion, the two decided to adopt the Y-series three-phase squirrel-cage asynchronous motor from the old-timeline national standards. This motor type was mature and widely used, with abundant reference materials. Moreover, based on over thirty years of old-timeline experience, this motor had proven reliable. Once trial production succeeded and passed technical validation, they could mass-produce motors between 0.75 and 37 kW.

To trial-produce this motor, he recruited several more transmigrators from mechanical and materials fields to help. Using the Science and Technology Department's workshop and equipment, they got to work. Finally, in the autumn of 1632, they successfully trial-produced the first Y-series three-phase squirrel-cage asynchronous motor manufactured in this timeline, named the "Light Unit Zero." Of course, "Light Unit Zero" couldn't truly be called "Made in Lingao"—not only was its silicon steel from another timeline, but even the copper wire for the windings was drawn from electrolytic copper brought from the old timeline. The copper they smelted in this timeline was all fire-refined copper, completely unsuitable for motor winding material.

Nevertheless, this achievement confirmed that the Power sector was fully capable of manufacturing motors in-house, giving the entire Power sector a considerable confidence boost. When Minister Chang Kaishen was reviewing one of Faraday's requests for materials and funding, he said meaningfully: "The motor testing task is urgent indeed!"

Yet the key players Faraday and Qian Liushi weren't so confident. They knew that as long as the Steel Company couldn't produce silicon steel, all their achievements were just castles in the air. The motor series they were preparing to mass-produce needed silicon steel sheets—from a few kilograms for the smaller units to about a hundred kilograms for the larger ones. These quantities of silicon steel couldn't possibly come from Planning Commission reserves; they had to rely on domestically produced silicon steel.

Everyone knew that domestically produced silicon steel couldn't possibly match the old-timeline silicon steel in the Planning Commission's inventory in terms of performance. But how large the gap was, no one had any idea. Moreover, hot-forged silicon steel sheets were mainly used for generators in the old timeline.

This power conference was convened by the Planning Commission, and many in the Power sector hoped to resolve these technical issues through the meeting, one by one.

Looking at the noisy conference room with everyone whispering to each other, Faraday's gaze fell on Qian Liushi sitting not far away. This partner of his was also a "technical backbone" of the Power Company. He had originally worked in generator installation and construction, making him the person in the Power sector who knew generators best—someone who had both "seen pigs run" and "eaten pork." He had been a capable worker during the installation of Bairren Hydroelectric Station, but that was about it. Both of them were among the "ambitious" figures in the Power sector—though neither would admit it.

Qian Liushi's transmigration was purely a momentary brain freeze. Before that, he had spent two years at an international engineering department of a generation equipment company doing power station construction and installation planning. When the 2008 international financial crisis broke the funding chain of his project and the contract was terminated, he found himself idle and started browsing forums. He got interested after discovering the transmigration topic, then came to the training camp during a business trip. He impulsively stayed and never went back. After resigning, it was too late to reconsider, so he had no choice but to follow through to the end.

Fortunately, he felt it was a pretty good choice. Since he had joined the transmigration organization relatively late, by the time he arrived, everything was basically ready. Having given away all his possessions to join with nothing, he didn't even have a proper buy-in stake. His suggestions about purchasing various water turbines, steam turbines, boilers, gas turbines, and generators were rejected because even a single unit cost millions. Fortunately, he had previously obtained large quantities of manufacturing blueprints for various power generation equipment and electrical facilities, barely giving himself some confidence that he had a ticket aboard. Unfortunately, the smallest generator set in his blueprints was 5,000 kW, and the next smallest was 35,000 kW—while the transmigrator collective currently lacked even the ability to manufacture 500 kW generators. This often left him sighing about having dragon-slaying skills with no dragon in sight.

As the clock approached one, Chang Kaishen, the People's Committee Member for Energy commissioned by the Planning Commission to chair the meeting, stepped up to the podium. Transmigrator Chang was only in his thirties, but his hair was already showing signs of thinning. He spoke in a measured, unhurried manner with a slight Zhejiang accent.

"Comrades, I have been commissioned by Planning Commission Director Wu De to chair this power work conference today. I hope everyone will speak freely and contribute to the Council's electrification! In this new year, let us strive for our new lives and new work!"

(End of Chapter)