A short distance farther up the river at the Dufferin Islands is the
beginning of the mammoth steel conduits of the Ontario Power Company.
These pass about a hundred yards from the shore and conduct the water to
the power-house situated in the canyon below the Falls. This contrivance
for water transmission consists of three steel pipes, the largest in the
world, eighteen feet in diameter, and a little over six thousand feet
long. This plant has the advantage of the others in several respects.
While it draws its water from farther up the river, it preserves it for
a longer time from the recession of the Falls, besides securing to it
the greater amount of power per volume by obtaining the additional
advantage of the descent of the rapids which amounts to about fifty-five
feet. The power plant located as it is in the Gorge discharges its waste
waters directly into the lower river without the necessity of an
intervening tunnel. Lastly, the plan of applying the power to the
turbines is slightly different in this case from the others, being made
possible by its different plan. Here the turbines are placed vertical
instead of horizontal, and are directly connected with the main
generators, which are the only machines located on the floor of the
station.
A departure from the ordinary construction of the dynamo is noticed in
those for use at Niagara. The ordinary one is built with the
field-magnets so placed that the armature revolves between them, the
field-magnets being stationary. In these monster dynamos, developing
thousands of horse-power, and weighing many tons, the field-magnets
revolve around the armature which remains stationary. With such an
enormous weight of swiftly revolving parts, it became necessary to
lessen the immense centrifugal force tending to tear the machine to
pieces. Engineering skill surmounted this problem as it did all others
in what might be called this mighty scientific drama, and, by reversing
the parts of the dynamo, secured the desired result. The field-magnets,
being placed on the outside and being made the revolving part, by their
mutual attraction for its armature within their ring are pulled, as it
were, toward the centre, thus lessening the great strain produced by the
centrifugal force upon the large steel ring upon whose inner
circumference they are mounted.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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