Pelzer Transmission Line

THREE-PHASE PLANT IN A SOUTHERN COTTON HILL

The electrical equipment of the extensive cotton mills of the Pelzer Manufacturing Company, one of the largest cotton goods manufacturing concerns In the South, is rapidly nearing completion. The motive power is derived from Victor turbine water wheels, driving three 750 kilowatt three-phase generators, wound for 3,300 volts. The water wheels turn at a speed of 164 revolutions per minute.

The electricity generated at the power house will be carried a distance of three and a half miles to Pelzer, where it will enter the mills and drive the following motors: One 400 h. p. synchronous motor wound for high potential and several multi-phase motors of varying capacities from 5 h. p. up to 110 h. p. The majority of these motors will be of the inverted type, suspended from the ceiling in the different rooms. They will receive the current at a low potential from step-down transformers, placed in the substation at the mills. The mills will also be lighted from the same circuit.

The system utilized in the operation of these mills is the three-phase system, developed by the General Electric Company. It is the same system in use at the Columbia mills at Columbus, S. C, and at the Ponemah Mills at Taftville, Conn.