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Pearl Street Station was the first central power plant in the United States. It was located at 255-257 Pearl Street in Manhattan on a site measuring ,〔"Edison" by Matthew Josephson. McGraw Hill, New York, 1959, pg. 255. , ISBN 0-07-033046-8〕 just south of Fulton Street and fired by coal. It began with one direct current generator, and it started generating electricity on September 4, 1882, serving an initial load of 400 lamps at 82 customers.〔Skruen uden ende, page 253, third edition〕 By 1884, Pearl Street Station was serving 508 customers with 10,164 lamps.〔 The station was built by the Edison Illuminating Company, which was headed by Thomas Edison. The station was originally powered by custom-made Porter-Allen high-speed steam engines designed to provide 175 horsepower at 700 rpm.,〔(Electrical world, Volume 80, McGraw-Hill, 1922, p.529 )〕 but these proved to be unreliable with their sensitive governors. They were removed and replaced with new engines from Armington & Sims that proved to be much more suitable for Edison's dynamos.〔(Electrical world, Volume 80, McGraw-Hill, 1922 )〕 Pearl Street Station not only holds the distinction of being the world's first central power plant, but it was also the world's first cogeneration plant.〔Industrial Motor Power Corp, What is Cogeneration?〕 While the steam engines provided grid electricity, Edison made use of the thermal byproduct by distributing steam to local manufacturers, and warming nearby buildings on the same Manhattan block. The station burned down in 1890, destroying all but one dynamo that is now kept in the Greenfield Village Museum in Dearborn, Michigan.〔(125 Years On: Pearl Street - Birthplace of the Electric Age ) (Interactive Presentation), Consolidated Edison Company of New York. Last accessed: 3 May 2009.〕 In 1929 the New York Edison Company constructed three scale working models of the station. When a button was pushed, a motor turned the engines, generators, and other equipment in the model. A set of lamps connected to labelled buttons identified the various areas of the building. Cut-outs in the side of the model building allowed examination of the boilers on the first level, reciprocating steam engines and dynamos on the reinforced second level, and the control and test gear on the third and fourth levels. The models were constructed to a scale of one-half inch to the foot and were 62 inches long, 34 inches high and 13 inches wide. The models still exist and are on display at the Smithsonian InstitutionBehring Center in Washington, at the Consolidated Edison Learning Center in Long Island City, New York and at the Henry Ford Museum in Dearborn, Michigan. Up to 31 people worked on constructing the models which took about 6 months to complete.〔Carl Sulzberger, ''Pearl Street in Miniature: models of the electric generating station'', IEEE Power and Energy', Volume 11 No. 2 March/April 2013, pp 76-81〕 ==See also== *Holborn Viaduct power station *War of Currents 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Pearl Street Station」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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