Chapter 28: Water and Electricity (Part 1)

The portable steam engine for power generation was initially planned for the main urban area, but the soot, noise, and high water consumption of the boiler made it a poor neighbor. It was ultimately installed in the hydropower area, its foundations raised to protect it from flooding.

The steam engine, for all its benefits, was a thirsty beast, and its boiler required soft water. Transporting distilled water from the ship was an extravagance they could not afford. Rainwater was ideal, but river water would have to do, though it was best to soften it first. Luo Duo offered to make tannin for this purpose, but he lacked the raw materials. In the end, Wang Luobin, drawing on his experience in the countryside, suggested a simpler solution: boiled water.

Boiling water for this behemoth was a monumental task. A row of stoves was dug on the riverbank, and every pot from the ship was put into service. The flames roared, steam filled the air, and the transmigrators were once again put to work cutting grass and felling trees. Firewood was piled high in small mountains.

“Why not just use a diesel generator?” Wen Desi asked, unimpressed by the magnificent scene. To him, it was a colossal waste of time and manpower. The steam engine may have saved them oil, but the cost in labor was far from economical.

The operation of the high-power steam engine required a hardened ground, not just for its own foundation, but for the entire urban area, especially the planned residential area and the city streets.

They had no bricks, but concrete was easy enough to make. Cement and steel bars had been brought on the ship, and Bairen Tan, which had been Lingao’s quarry for centuries, provided an endless supply of stone. The transmigrators found the quarry abandoned, the stonemasons having fled, leaving behind a wealth of cut stone and crushed stone waste. River sand was plentiful, and Wu Kuangming’s electric sawmill at Bopu provided the wooden formwork for the concrete.

With the foundation for the steam engine complete, the construction team moved on to the hydropower project. Boiling water for the boiler was not a long-term solution, and the growing city would soon demand more electricity than the steam engine could provide.

The energy group had a full set of design drawings for the Bairen Tan hydropower station, but after consulting with the construction team, they all agreed that the project was beyond their current capabilities. The original station, built in the 1960s, had been a massive undertaking, requiring the labor of the entire county. The transmigrators’ resources were far more limited.

They settled on a simpler design: a channel-type diversion power station with a 200KW generator. The plan was to excavate a diversion channel upstream of the Bairen Tan waterfall. The channel would feed into a forebay, which would connect to a pressure pipe. The forebay would settle sediment, intercept debris, and regulate the flow of water to the turbine. A wooden arc gate, a design popular during the Great Leap Forward, would control the flow.

The pressure pipe was a major challenge. It had to withstand not only the pressure of the water head but also the water hammer effect created when the turbine gates were closed. Modern power stations used steel or reinforced concrete pipes. They had no large-diameter steel pipes, and while they could make reinforced concrete, the consumption of steel and cement would be too great. Ceramic pipes were too weak.

Wang Luobin proposed a solution: wooden pipes. Made from thick planks tightened with iron hoops, they were stronger than concrete and could be used for water heads up to 100 meters. With proper maintenance, they could last for twenty years.

Wood was plentiful, and Wu Kuangming’s earthen kiln, though inefficient, could provide enough dried lumber. The real difficulty was in splicing the pipes. It was a craft akin to coopering, and one that was nearly lost. After several failed attempts, someone used CAD modeling to break down the dimensions of each component. The wood group, faced with processing drawings accurate to the millimeter, didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. They had no CNC sawing machine.

But the numbers provided a direction. After a few days of trial and error, the first pipe was completed. It was four meters long and 0.7 meters in diameter. A water-filling test revealed that the splicing was not strong enough. They increased the thickness of the iron hoops and the wood, and the second attempt was successful. The sawmill produced 32 meters of wooden pipes, with 12 meters as a backup. The backup proved necessary; two pipes were scrapped during construction. The joints were sealed with cement mortar, and the support piers and anchor blocks were built with cement mortar and stone.

The power plant building, at the bottom of the pressure pipe, required a solid foundation of crushed stone mortar concrete.

Though none of them had ever built a hydropower station, the equipment, designed for rural use, came with detailed instructions. With their combined engineering experience and their memories of modern power stations, it was not difficult to figure out the construction methods. The channel was an earthen ditch, and the other buildings were made of cement mortar and stone.

Excavating the rocky sections was difficult, but with air compressors and pneumatic picks, they made steady progress. The Executive Committee had allocated some ammonium nitrate and kerosene for explosives, but Mei Wan, lacking experience in their use, was reluctant to use them.

Wang Luobin, with his years of experience in rural Guangxi, was familiar with small hydropower stations and other agricultural projects. He was put in charge of coordinating the work. While inspecting the site one day, he saw a group of men from the construction team gathered at the hydropower station, arguing. He recognized the two at the center of the dispute: Mei Wan, the team leader, and Zhuo Tianmin, the man who had proposed the simple road.