Pacific service magazine . eceives compara-tively little general considerationand is still less understood. Howthe energy contrives to get fromthe mountain generators to ourfactories and farms to turn ourmachinery and to our towns andcities to light and heat our homesremains much of a popular mys-teiy. This may be explained, in part,by the fact that it is difficult to visualize a transmission line 100 or 200miles in length. We see a tower or two,or a few poles, in traveling the highways,but where the line begins or ends is tooremote to arouse interest. Another possiblereason for this lack of g


Pacific service magazine . eceives compara-tively little general considerationand is still less understood. Howthe energy contrives to get fromthe mountain generators to ourfactories and farms to turn ourmachinery and to our towns andcities to light and heat our homesremains much of a popular mys-teiy. This may be explained, in part,by the fact that it is difficult to visualize a transmission line 100 or 200miles in length. We see a tower or two,or a few poles, in traveling the highways,but where the line begins or ends is tooremote to arouse interest. Another possiblereason for this lack of general understand-ing lies in the rapid strides which have beenand are being taken in the technical devel-opment of the arts of transmission and dis-tribution. In 1891 there came into exist-ence the first transmission in California,consisting of a pigmy line a few miles inlength near Pomona and carrying 10,000volts. In 1923 we find this Companysmain lines from the Pit River plants tothe Vaca - Dixon Substation transmitting. In the storm country. Steel tower on the Pit River trans-mission line. Pacific Service Magazine 379 at 220,000 volts, a distance of 202 this progress has come to pass in thirtytwo years. In fact, it is only during thepast ten years that the present type ofclosely co-ordinated transmission and distri-bution network has been operated. The fullest conception of a transmissionand distribution system such as that of thePacific Gas and Electric Company may bemost readily gained perhaps by tracing thegeneral routing of the hydro-electric energyfrom its sources in the Sierra to its points ofutili2;ation in the valleys below. When the Pit River water turns thewheels in the Pit No. 1 plant, the genera-tors are of an installed capacity sufficientto produce 70,000 kilowatts of electric en-ergy at a pressure of 11,000 volts. Afterbeing passed through the main transform-ers at the generating station, this block ofpower is fed into the main transmission linesat 2


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