Norwich bulletin., 1913-10-20
CITY BACK TO CANDLELICHT DAYS
Norwich Electric Light Plant Crippled For Time Saturday and Sunday Evenngs-Worst Teup the Plant Has Known-Low Water in the River Put the 75O Klowatt Turbine Out of Business Says the Superintendent

For about 15 minutes Sunday night and for about double that time on Sat- urday evening, Norwich slipped back into candle light days again through the collapse of the city electric light plant in furnishing the electric cur rent. On each evening, the period of total absence of electric fluid and con- seuent darkness over the entire city was succeeded by a period of semi supply of electricity so that the com mercial business was taken care or, but the city street lights had to walt for a longer time before they were doing business again.
 An extremely low tide in the She tucket river said Superintendent Ste- phen J. Kehoe, combined with the holding up of water because the mills upstream were not running, was the of water, he said. completely crippled the operation of the 750 kilowat tur- bine unit at the plant The eIght or ten foot we'll which is supplied by river water for the use of the turbine was pumped completely dry and the tur- bine had to be shut down in conse- quence. It takes $500 gallons 8 min ute when the turbine is running.
 Then the UnCas Power company, which ordinarily may be called on in emergencies here, was not available because of the repairs which have been underway there for the last eight weeks. The same conditions of low water have arisen before, he said, when the turbine was running, but they were then able to hitch on to the Uncas Power company line and avoid all trouble. The same thing could have been done Saturday and Sunday if the UncaS Power company plant had been running and the citizens would not have known anything about the trouble they were having.
 As far as a repetition of the trouble might be expected, Superintendent Ke- hoe said it was hardly to be expected except on a Saturday or a Sunday under similar circumstances through the mills holding up the water.
 Total Darkness at 6.25 Saturday.
 The first failure of the local electric current came about 6.25 o'clock, when every light in the city, in houses, bus mess places and on the streets, sud- denly went out, plunging the city into inky blackness. Downtown the Satu1 day night shopping crowd was in the stores or on the streets while in the homes of the city it caught many fam lilies sitting around the supper table.
 After a few moments of waiting to see if the light would not come back, the general move all over the city was to get out lamps or candles or to light up with gas in those places which happened to be supplied with both means of illumination.
 Small Engine Furnished Partial Light
 At the electric light plant the way out of the difficulty was to get up steam in the 45O kilowatt Bass engine, which was done as soon as possible. and the current which it generated turned into the commercial lines to take care of the stores and business section on the busy Saturday night time. There is also a 750 kilowatt steam unit at the plant. but this has been out of commission for some weeks and all that was left to depend upon was the smaller engine. which was not equal to carrying the whole