I've known for decades that Tesla helped Westinghouse build the first major hydro-electric power plant in the world. AC current was chosen for this plant, and it was Tesla's "final victory" of the "Current Wars" (AC vs. DC) with Edison.
And now I finally know where that plant was built.
It is not sufficient to put a building on the National Registry as a National Landmark to preserve the building; the roof must also be maintained.
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| TeslaSociety A higher-resolution photo via HABS NY,32-NIAF,3- |
This is a view of the Transformer House. It is the building in the left foreground of the above photo. (The wastewater facility reuses much of the land of the power houses and its inlet canal, and it also reuses the tailrace tunnel of the power plant .)
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| Street View, Oct 2018 |
It is not sufficient to put a building on the National Registry as a National Landmark to preserve the building; the roof must also be maintained.
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| Marni Blake Walter posted Adams power plant |
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| Marni Blake Walter posted Adams power plant |
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| New York Energy Alliance posted New Yorkers ignored the advice of the most famous scientist in Britain to build hydropower at Niagara Falls. Lord Kelvin, who helped write the entropic second law of thermodynamics, cabled the Niagara Falls Power Company in 1893: ‘Trust you avoid gigantic mistake of adoption alternating current." The company built it anyway. On August 26, 1895, the Adams plant sent its first power to the Pittsburgh Reduction Company, today’s Alcoa, to make aluminum half a mile away. On November 15, 1896, a 26-mile line started running Buffalo’s streetcars. By 1900, ten Westinghouse generators were turning under one roof, 50,000 horsepower, for years the largest hydroelectric plant in the world. Kelvin came to see it in 1897. He wrote in the visitors’ book that he was “very much pleased to see the great success here achieved.” The plant ran until 1961, when the Power Authority’s new Niagara plant took the water. Its stone transformer house still stands near Buffalo Avenue. Every outlet in New York runs on alternating current. John P. Weiksnar: Clarification: Powerhouses No. 1 (1895) and No. 2 (~1903–1904) of the Edward Dean Adams Power Plant (Niagara Falls Power Company) generated power actively until about 1926. Upon completion of the more efficient Schoellkopf Station 3-C (higher head of roughly 210 feet vs. the Adams plants’ ~140 feet, plus better overall design), the Adams plants were placed on *standby/reserve* status. Water diversion rights were better used by the Schoellkopf complex in the gorge. After the June 7, 1956 collapse of Schoellkopf Stations 3B and 3C (which destroyed roughly two-thirds of that complex and caused a major loss of generating capacity), the Adams plants were brought back into active service to help fill the power gap. They operated alongside the repaired Schoellkopf Station 3A. Both the Adams stations and the remaining Schoellkopf 3A were permanently shut down on September 30, 1961, when the New York Power Authority’s new Robert Moses Niagara Power Plant took over the water rights. Reply |
The early powerhouses (see also the 1905 William B. Rankine Power Station) were built upstream of the Niagara Falls and a deep underground tunnel was used to dump the water to the downstream side of the falls. More modern powerhouses use a canal or shallow tunnel to transport the water to a powerhouse on the canyon wall downstream of the falls. When this plant was built, the hydraulic canal transported water to mills that already lined the canyon wall on the American side.
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| HABS NY,32-NIAF,3- 6. Photocopy of print (from Niagara Power, Volume II, p. 19) Delineator and date unknown DIAGRAM OF INLET-CANAL, POWER-HOUSES AND TUNNEL - Edward D. Adams Station Power Plant, Niagara River & Buffalo Avenue, Niagara Falls, Niagara County, NY Photos from Survey HABS NY-6150 |
The first powerhouse and transformer house were built in 1895. The second powerhouse was built in 1903. Both powerhouses generated power until 1926, and they were demolished in 1961 after the Robert Moses Power Plant was built. [guidetags]
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| HABS NY,32-NIAF,3- 14. Photocopy of photograph (original in collection of Niagara Mohawk) Photographer unknown, c1960 AERIAL VIEW |
I'm surprised that the generators used vertical shafts because the modern thrust bearing was not used until 1912.
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| TeslaSociety "Interior of Edward Dean Adams power station at Niagara, with ten 5,000-horsepower Tesla/Westinghouse AC generator." |
The above caption implies one of the powerhouses had an output of 50mw. But this source indicates it was 37mw.
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| EdisonTechCenter |
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| HABS NY,32-NIAF,3- 5. Photocopy of photograph Photographer and date unknown GENERATOR |
This diagram shows that some sort of thrust bearing had been developed by 1895. And that bearing has to support a long shaft as well as the rotor of the generator and the turbine wheels. An advantage of building a powerhouse down in the canyon is that the long shaft is not needed.
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| HABS NY,32-NIAF,3- 8. Photocopy of print (from Niagara Power, Volume II, p. 77) Delineator and date unknown ORIGINAL FAESCH AND PICCARD DEISGN OF WHEEL PIT FOR POWER HOUSE NUMBER ONE |
It turns out that more than Tesla helped Westinghouse build the generators.
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"From 1892 to 1894, the Niagara Falls Power Company built a 6,700 foot (2042m) long, 21 foot (6m) high and 18 foot (5m) wide horseshoe shaped tunnel which was 160 feet (49m) underground. Twenty-eight workers died in construction related accidents during this project. The tunnel extended from the Niagara Power Company Powerhouse. The tunnel displaced 300,000 tons of rock and required 20 million bricks and 2.5 million feet of lumber to line and shore the interior." [NiagaraFrontier]
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