Childs - Irving Power Plants in AZ

In the Girdner Reunion post this summer I showed a couple photos of a power plant where my Grandpa worked and that my Dad remembers vividly. 

Dad wrote a long comment on the blog but it was too lengthy to post.  I asked him to send his comments to me so I could share.  He also sent me a link with some interesting history.  Since I work for a company that makes turbines this is especially interesting to me.  http://www.pinestrawhs.org/childsirving.htm

I want to thank you for posting the pictures of the generator and turbine from the Irving hydro electric plant. I have many memories of that very unit humming away night and day adding it's electrical power to the grid. I remember the warmth, smells and sounds. I spent time there with my dad while he was on duty. It was a little noisier then to be able to talk without shouting but not enough to damage your ears. There was a small sound proofed room off to the side for the telephone. I used to go there and dad would help me with my homework.

Looking at the generator in the picture you'll notice a smaller generator on the right hand side, that is the exciter which generated DC current to excite the field coils of the big one. Also some of the governor is seen but not really pronounced. and of course the turbine in the left hand picture. It had movable veins that directed the water flow into the turbine buckets to very the power output to match the load. The governor controlled the position of the veins to keep the speed constant and output exactly on 60 cycles per second.

An exciting time was when the plant got bumped off the line. It took two men to put it back on. One man on the hand wheel on the governor and the other holding the big switch handle. There was a meter on the wall with one needle that went around and around and a series of light bulbs that came on in a certain sequence. You  had to control the governor by hand until the meter on the wall finally settled down and certain lights were lit, The meter needle had be slowed and stopped straight up. At that instant the big switch handle had to be slammed in hard and held there. If the cycles were synchronized exactly the switch would hold, if not then it would kick  out and they would have to start over. My dad usually got in on the fun of putting it back on line as our house was closest to the plant. You would always hear it when there was a bump. The sudden loss of load would over speed the turbine and generator and had to manually be brought down to a safe rpm.

The Irving school house was downstream a bit from the plant and the pathway went right along side the flume on discharge from the plant. On a cold morning the water in the flume felt warm compared to the air temperature. The school was one room with eight grades. I was a third grader. There was another power plant farther down about nine or ten miles that reused the same water. That was called the Childs plant. The kids from Childs were hauled to Irving for school. There were a couple family's who lived in the area but didn't work for the AZ power. One was an Indian family. Those kids attended Irving school also.

It's so sad to see what has happened to the wonderful clean power available and to waste it for nothing. The environmentalists would rather use nuclear, coal or oil and pollute the air, isn't that dumb.

Squirrel Damage?

You may have seen the news last week about all the rain the Southeast was getting.  Here, in our neck of the woods we got nearly 10" in about 24 hours.  According to the news there was flooding but I never saw any.  The ground was so thirsty from what seems like months of no rain that it soaked up a whole lot of the water.

After all the rain, the wind began to blow and apparently it blew rather severely, because, just about midnight our power went out. The next morning we found out why.  This downed tree is a half a block from us.  I also lost one of my apple trees.  It was only 4 years old and still rather small so it didn't do any damage.

The power company arrived about 5:30 pm to clear this tree and restring the wires.  When they finished, after dark, they turned the power back on and Larry and I heard popping all over the house.  We found smoke coming out of our dishwasher and smelled fried electrical wires in the office.  I ran outside and stopped the work truck just as they were leaving and told him what happened.  He stayed and found the problem a few hundred feet from the tree on the same wire.  He told us it was squirrel damage!  Really?

When we accessed the damage we found that our dishwasher, oven and garage door opener were fried.  Several light bulbs were also fried.  Fortunately, our fridge and freeze were plugged into the generator at the time so they're okay.  Every surge protector in the house was fried but they did their job and protected the TV, computers, printer, etc.  The one in the office actually left black soot on the file cabinet where it was sitting.  Good thing it wasn't sitting on the carpet!