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19
Metropolitan Electric Supply Corporation, Sardinia Street Station.
Your Sub-Committee, on the 7 th of December, paid a visit to the central station
of this Company at Sardinia Street, Lincoln's Inn Fields.
The Company was formed in July, 1888, and the installation at Sardinia
Street ranks as one of the best on the high tension alternating
system. The Company has powers to supply electricity over a very
extensive district, comprising Paddington, Marylebone, Regent's
Park, Soho, St. Giles, the Strand, and Holborn, and has several
stations at work for meeting the demand within this large area. The
sites of the Company's stations are at Whitehall, Waterloo Wharf,
Sardinia Street, Rathbone Place, Manchester Square, and St. Peter's
Wharf, Paddington, and it is especially noticeable that no one
method of working or type of machinery is adhered to in all the
installations. The stations are connected together, so that in the
event of a break-down at one, assistance could be rendered from the
others. Your Sub-Committee confined its observations to the Sardinia
Street Station, that being the most important installation undertaken
by the Company. While some Companies generate current at a
tension of little more than 100 volts, and others at 2,000 or 2,500,
this Company produce it at a potential of 1,000 volts, and this
installation was, therefore, interesting to your Sub-Committee as a
contrast to those that had been previously visited. Your SubCommittee
found that the plant at this station is capable of serving
70,000 8 c.p. lamps, and that about 40,000 8 c.p. lamps have been
installed. There are five engines of 320 h.p., and five of 250 h.p.,
each of which drives a Westinghouse alternator in a room above,
capable of developing 130 amperes at 1,000 volts, and three of 90 h.p.
for driving the exciters; all of the engines being of the Westinghouse
Automatic Compound type. The whole of the dynamos (of which
there are 10) and machinery are of American manufacture. The
boilers, 12 in number, are of 210 indicated h.p. each, and are all of
the Babcock-Wilcox make. An extensive building adjoining the
engine and dynamo rooms is used as a store-house lor all the
Company's stations, meter testing rooms, living rooms for staff, &c.
The mains are laid on what is called the ring system, and are mostly
about ¾-inch in outside diameter while some are ½-inch diameter.
The cables are drawn into cast iron pipes of about 5-inch diameter