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Steam Plant Facility: A Technological Miracle
City Light's Steam Plant, 1928
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City Light demonstrated the power of electricity in an era when large-scale distribution of electricity was a new technological advancement in competition with the more established natural gas industry. The Steam Plant was designed to serve as a civic symbol for City Light. To display this image of power and "the future," City Light placed a large sign on the roof that gleamed across the lake while spotlights lit up the sky. The towering windows of the Steam Plant allowed outside viewers to see the massive machinery illuminated within.
Inside, the fourteen boilers relied on water tubes for transferring the water and raising the temperature of the resulting steam through Foster superheaters. The burners used by the boilers enabled atomized, heated fuel to be mixed with steam to facilitate burning, producing 200 pounds of pressure. The steam that ran the turbines was condensed by three jet condensers that were capable of condensing 97,500 pounds of steam per hour. The steam could be regulated and released at different pressures to spin the turbines to produce electricity. Flowing at a high voltage of 420 volts, the electricity would run through transformers that were housed in the penthouse and released, as needed, to the city.
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Boiler equipment inside the Steam Plant
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Interior, three 50,000 hp generators,
1921
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Steam Plant interior
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