The Washington times. [volume] (Washington [D.C.]) 1902-1939, 1923-09-01
SWEDISH WHITE
COAL POWER
GROWING
Nations Whole Railroad Sys-
tenn May Be Electrified
in Short Time.
BY HUGH REDWOOn.

IN snort Time.
BY HUGH REDWOOD.
Foreign Editor London Daily News.
(WFitten for International News service.)
STOCKHOLD, Sept. Sweden,
with a hundred iron works. a great
engineering industry, and a more ex-
tensive railway system when con-
sidered in proportion to population
to any other country in Europe, pos
sesses only one coal field. and an in
ferior one at that. Hence the ex-
IRENE Importance of her white
coal" the power developed from her
lakes and rivers by a. network of
hydro-electric stations under govern
ment control.
l hate statistics and l would run
miles to escape a graph, being, in
both these respects. singularly unlike
my Swedish friends, who gram and
graph everything and whose stats.
teal tables are as heavily laden as
their Smorgasbord. But when some
body says that Sweden may soon be
exporting electric energy to Dem
mark through conduits laid under the
Sound, and that inside of twenty
years every yard of her $500 miles
Of railway will be operated by cleo
tricity, I begin to sit up and take
notice.
Project Not Definite.
AS a matter of fact, the Swedo-
Danish project is as yet in the air
rather than under the sea, largely
owing to the fact that Norway is
also in the running. But the most
northerly railway in the country
and, indeed, in the worlds already
electrified. and a start is now
being made with the main line from
Gothenburg to Stockholm. So when
was given an opportunity of visit
ing one of the three hundred water
power stations in Genital Sweden,
that at Aelvkarleo, on the Dala river,
near -Gefle, / was glad to avail my
self of it.
For a technical description of this
and other power stations the reader
may be referred to State Power
Plants in Sweden" lucid and valua-
bic illustrated volume, published in
English by Messrs Almqvist & WIKI
sell, of Upsala. The remaining space
at my disposal will best be utilized
by explaining the principle on which
power is distributed to the rural
VsnAz IL
karleo first of all.
Under State Control.
Under state administration, the
energy is transmitted through trans
former stations to tertiary stations
spread over large rural areas at in
tervals of four to eight miles. In
this process the pressure is brought
down from 10000 to 10000 volts to
1 500 to 5000.
At the tertiary stations the cur
rent is taken over. by cooperative
distribution societies formed by
farmers and other small consumers,
those living within one tertiary sta
ton district forming a single indie
pendent society.
The societies build and operate
their own distribution plant, procur-
ing the capital by taking up loans
in savings banks and other banking
institutions. The loans, mostly on a
10 Or 25 year basis, are guaranteed
by all the members, with the chair
man as prime security. This method
has the merit of freeing individual
members Of initial payment to the
society at time when they have
necessarily to provide considerable
sums for the electrical equipment of
their farms and shops.
Each society signs a power con-
tract with the state. 1t then resells
the energy to its own members at a
price fixed by itself, often so low as
to be almost negligible. 1t may also
sell to non-members, but in such
cases the state fixes the charge.
In the matter of water power, as
in most other things, Sweden is far
seeing. She uses at present about
l,25O'OOO horsepower a year out of
total resources estimated at cour
10 six million. Already she is at
work on trunk line and reservoir
schemes TO guard against a shortage
in the south though this can hardly
occur for another twelve or fifteen
years. by which time a vast scheme
or power transmission from the north
should be in opera ton.