Steam vs. electricity for driving power station auxiliaries

During the past few years important changes effected in power station and system design have reduced operating expenses materially. At present, however, station designers are giving more attention to the reducing of investment costs. This reduction of plant investment quite naturally affects the plant auxiliaries as well as other station equipment. Many large stations built recently have practically all of the essential as well as the non-essential auxiliaries driven by electricity; but in other recent stations steam driven auxiliaries have been used quite extensively. In the light of present conditions and past operating experience, therefore, the A.I.E.E. power generation committee felt that a review of the characteristics and merits of both steam and electric drives would be in order. Accordingly, this committee has sponsored three papers to be presented at the Institute's forthcoming winter convention, and upon these papers the following three articles are based.