The Salt Lake herald. [volume] (Salt Lake City [Utah]) 1870-1909, 1899-09-22
Union Light & Power Company's In
Interchangeable Scheme.
BUT ONE SUB STATION
JOINING OF OGDEN AND COT
ToNWooD PLANTS.
Currents From Generating Plants
Sixty Miles Apart Will Be United
and Sent Over One Distributing
System-Will Be Watched By
Electricians With Interest.

The Union Light & Power company
is about to carry out d novel and in
teresting experiment. At present it has
two sources of power; one in Ogden
which is transmitted across country
and enters the sub-station on Fourth
West street, where it is converted from
a high to commercial electrical pres
other power plant is situated in the
Big Cottonwood canyon, and the wires
conveying the electric energy run from
there TO a sub station in the rear of the
Hotel Knutsford.
The company is now engaged in erect
ing the largest and strongest poles OBJ
tainable on Fourth South street, and
as soon as the line is completed the sub
station connected with the Big Cotton
wood plant will be Abandoned; the
wires shifted on to the new poles, and
carried into the sub station on Fourth
West street.
The two sources of energy will be
combined in the Fourth West street
sub station and arranged in such a
way that either or both of the distant
power plants will carry the load, in
other words the systems will be made
interchangeable
This is a comparatively new depart
ure in the field of electrical work, and
the outcome will be watched with in
terest by electricians. Both the Ogden
and Big Cottonwood are what is
known in the electrical world as three
phase alternating current transmission
plants. In every day language this
means that the electrical current al
ternates in direction of flow, first going
through the circuit one way, and then
reversing and going through the other
way. The three phase means that the
armatures of the dynamos are wound
in such a way as to give three separate
electrical impulses in one direction and
three in the reverse direction during
each revolution.
The project to connect these two
plants together so as to work in unison
each supplying it's current to the same
distributing system, gives use to a
novel state of affairs. The energies
from the separate sources cannot be
joined together haphazard, because the
conditions are such that the energy
from one source might work against
and counterfeit the energy from the
other-one machine might be sending
current in one direction while the op-
posite conditions might prevail in the
other. To avoid this the machines are
brought UP to special speed and made
to synchronize, that is compelled to
walk in step. so to speak. This is done
by means of an apparatus consisting
of lamps, and an electrician can tell
just when to throw the switch that will
join the two machines in parallel, as
it is called. This is done almost every
day in the power house of the Utah
Power company, but the novelty of this
experiment consists in thus joining to-
gether two machines situated SO far
apart. The distance from Salt Lake to
Ogden canyon is about forty-five miles
and from Salt Lake to Big Cottonwood
about twenty miles. and thus in a
short space of time Salt Lake will have
two plants working in the utmost har-
mony though they are separated some
sixty odd miles apart.