Chapter 94: Song of Electricity (Part 5)

He saw that the several power sector Elders who had gathered at the Agricultural Estate Teahouse last night under the pretext of discussing the meeting’s agenda were now sitting upright and full of energy at the conference table, which made him very happy. He cleared his throat and said, “As you may already know, through the efforts of Elder Faraday, the Yuanlao Yuan’s first independently researched and produced practical electric motor has been successfully tested. I won’t elaborate on the great significance of this progress for the empire. On behalf of the People’s Committee for Energy and the Planning Department, I would like to extend my warmest congratulations to all of you on the front lines of research and production.”

Although everyone present knew the true meaning of “independent research and development,” they still gave a warm round of applause. After all, even with a Tamiya kit, it takes good skill to assemble a good model, and what Faraday had to work with was more like a sailboat model kit from a small Eastern European factory, so being able to build it was even more remarkable.

After the applause, Commissioner Chang continued, “The successful manufacturing of the electric motor is just a small step in the establishment of our prime mover system. We have already begun to widely use steam engines, but their use is subject to many restrictions such as site, transportation, and fuel supply. Moreover, they are less safe, and their high energy consumption and relatively low energy density are insufficient to meet the needs of our rapidly developing cause. Furthermore, electricity is indispensable in the metallurgical and chemical industries. Therefore, promoting electrification will inevitably bring about earth-shaking changes and a meteoric rise in our cause. The entire Yuanlao Yuan, the comrades of the Executive Committee, and our colleagues in the Planning Department are all eagerly hoping to develop our power industry as soon as possible. And the development of our power industry rests on your shoulders.”

Another round of enthusiastic applause followed.

“Next, let’s invite the person in charge of the power development plan, Comrade Qian Liushi, to talk about our power development plan.”

Qian Liushi stood up, walked to the podium with a folder, his face beaming. He first shook hands warmly with Chang Kaishen, then signaled to an Elder by the window to draw the curtains. Next, he turned on a projector on the table.

This was not a computer projector, but a traditional overhead projector, a device the Elders present were quite familiar with. For Qian Liushi, this projector was the most advanced multimedia equipment he had encountered in his elementary and junior high school days. He had even helped his teachers make many transparencies. Now, no one had the patience to spend a long time making a PowerPoint presentation. And without the internet, they couldn’t download suitable images and materials from the vast sea of online resources. They could only draw by hand. And if they were going to draw by hand on a computer, they might as well draw directly on a plastic sheet.

Moreover, in this kind of discussion meeting, a simple schematic diagram was sufficient. Besides, people often had ideas on the fly. While someone else was speaking, you could finish drawing your own diagram. After they finished, you could put your hand-drawn diagram on the projector and start talking, even making changes as you spoke. It was truly a tailor-made killer app for the Elders.

The Planning Department had recently purchased twenty of these. After D-Day, due to habit, digital projectors were still used in meetings, except for the Ministry of Education, which immediately put them into use in schools. It wasn’t until the stock of projector bulbs recently dropped to a critical level that these projectors were suddenly remembered.

Since most of them had already been taken by the Ministry of Education, the remaining ones became hot commodities. Only a few major departments like the Planning Department managed to get their hands on them.

Qian Liushi cleared his throat and said:

“Now I will briefly explain today’s meeting agenda based on the results of previous discussions on the forum and in other meetings. I hope everyone will add what I have not listed. Below, I will first talk about the current situation of our Lin’gao Power Company.”

A few days ago, Qian Liushi and Faraday had a long talk with Chang Kaishen, Wu De, and others at the Planning Department. The content of the conversation mainly focused on the current situation of the power department and the production capacity and technical level of the existing machinery manufacturing and metal smelting industries. The power company was actually just a power generation, transmission, and distribution enterprise. The manufacturing of power equipment still relied on the industrial departments, and the level of machinery manufacturing and the metallurgical industry determined the scale and standard of the power industry.

The total power generation capacity of Lin’gao Power currently connected to the grid was 1120kW, of which 600kW was hydroelectric power from the three 200kW units at the Bairen Hydroelectric Station. The thermal power generation was 520kW: 100kW from the Bopu Fengcheng wheel power station and 420kW from the Bopu thermal power station, driven by two Czech-made stationary portable steam engines.

In addition to this 1120kW, they also had a total of 400kW of wind power, small hydropower, solar power, and thermal power operating in a self-sufficient power station mode, not connected to the grid. Most of this was to solve the problem of domestic electricity for scattered garrisons and had no significance for the power industry. Only in Sanya was there a 100kW generator set driven by a portable steam engine, and at the Ma Niao Steel Company, a 150kW diesel engine, now converted to a gas engine, was in use.

The “power grid” of Lin’gao Power, according to Qian Liushi and other power professionals, was a power transmission and distribution system consisting of a 10kV transmission cable laid along the Wenlan River, which couldn’t be called a “grid” at all. It was just a transmission system consisting of a single busbar, with only two outgoing lines, a few connections in the middle, and a few small distribution rooms. It was both primitive and crude. Even so, the Lin’gao Power Company had insisted on grid-connected power supply from the very beginning. The goal was the stability and continuous power supply capability of the grid. If they used a self-sufficient power station model, the power would have to be cut off whenever the equipment needed maintenance. With a grid, equipment maintenance would not affect the power supply. This was very important for many departments and enterprises that required continuous power.

However, in the beginning, this “power grid” was too rudimentary. Not only did it not show much superiority, but it also collapsed frequently. The main problem was the insufficient power generation capacity connected to the grid at the beginning. The Lin’gao Power Company had exhausted all its efforts to barely get the grid-connected power generation to exceed 1MW, which gave it a little bit of a grid effect. Otherwise, any equipment failure, including a large load dropping offline, would cause this “power grid” to collapse. For this reason, Qian Liushi had always hoped to install the other two 200kW hydroelectric generators so that this primitive “power grid” could operate more stably.

The entire power system used a 10kV/400V transmission and distribution standard. The user voltage was 380V for industrial use and the same as the old world standard for residential use. All power-consuming units, except for the self-sufficient power stations, were the Yuanlao Yuan’s government offices and industrial and agricultural enterprises distributed along the Wenlan River, mainly supplying power to the two bases of Bairen City and Bopu. The major consumers of electricity were the electrolysis processes of the chemical industry, and the precision machining and electroplating of the machinery industry. In addition, medical, pharmaceutical, and schools were also guaranteed a full supply of electricity. The other major consumer was the computers in the various computing centers. In comparison, the domestic and office electricity consumption of the Elders was at the bottom of the power supply priority list. The power supply was just too tight.

“…Our industrial technology needs to be upgraded now, especially in the chemical and metallurgical industries, which rely on a sufficient supply of electricity. The installed capacity of the Lin’gao power grid is bound to have a major development. Therefore, the next step is to put enough effort into research and development in power generation and transmission and distribution.” Qian Liushi removed the slide on the “Current Status of Power Production and Supply” and replaced it with another one.

“The main problem we are facing now is the need for a breakthrough in material science.” Qian Liushi knew that generators, electric motors, and transmission and distribution equipment were not high-tech. They had plenty of data and original models to refer to, but the material capabilities that the current industry could provide for manufacturing this equipment were a bit weak.

“First is the self-production of silicon steel sheets. The Ma Niao Steel Company is currently organizing people to tackle this technical problem. We don’t have an electric arc furnace—of course, even if we did, we probably couldn’t afford the electricity—so we can only use pyrometallurgical methods. The current test results are that both quality and output are unsatisfactory.”

This result was not surprising. Silicon steel is a high-grade special steel and is very difficult to produce. In the old world, it was made in an electric arc furnace. It was wishful thinking to expect the Ma Niao Steel Company to produce results immediately.

“…We have made further technical breakthroughs on this issue.” Ge Xinxin from the Ma Niao Central Heavy Industry Laboratory stood up. She was a beautiful woman in her late twenties, dressed in the same four-pocket coarse blue cloth work uniform in the style of a training suit as the other male Elders around her. Only the ponytail tied with a ribbon revealed her femininity. Of course, if you sat close to her, you could also smell a faint scent of perfume.

“For silicon steel smelting, the biggest difficulty is the preparation of silicon powder. We are trying to solve this. However, our laboratory has also proposed another method to produce silicon, which is reduction with copper or aluminum. Which method to adopt will depend on the test results.” She scanned the Elders in the conference room who were looking at her and said in a clear voice, “But we can guarantee that if you give us another month, we will definitely overcome this difficulty.”

Qian Liushi nodded. “Good. In that case, we can consider the mass production of silicon steel to be solved.” He continued, “Next is the transmission line. We can’t manufacture steel-cored aluminum stranded wire now, so the only option is bare copper wire. This involves the problem of electrolytic copper production. Not only do the wires need electrolytic copper, but electric motors also need a large amount of electrolytic copper to be produced. Our current power supply is a bit tight.”

In the 21st-century Chinese industry, producing one ton of electrolytic copper consumed about 309 kWh of electricity. At Lin’gao’s technological level, this energy consumption would probably have to be doubled.