Water power, Ford, Village Industries

[gar]

140921-0819 EDT

Henry Ford built a number of small plants around the country. Mostly in southern Michigan. Some time back someone on this forum ask a question about water powered homes or factories. One characteristic of these small Ford factories was that they were located on streams and made some use of water power. This was part of the idea to be self-sufficient.

At Henry's Fairlane Estate, construction circa 1913, a dam on the adjacent Rouge River and a neutral based 120-0-120 DC power plant were built. This predates the power plants in the Village Industries. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fair_Lane

In a book titled "Beyond The Model T", by Ford R. Bryan, is a table of many of the Ford Village Industries, date of construction, maximum horsepower, and head. I don't have this book, but I need to get it. The power table from it was sent to me by a Naturalist from the Nankin Mills location. This is now a nature center of the Wayne County Parks System. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Village_industries

I had never been in the Nakin Mills facility before I stopped by several weeks ago. The head is 15 ft and the generator is 52 HP, 240 V DC. River flow is not sufficient at all times to supply this amount of power. Thus, there is a supplemental steam system. I was able to see the generator, but the previous week we had a major flood and at that time I could not see the steam plant part.

The table has 18 locations. The specs from a few are:

8 ft, 41 HP, Raisin River, Sharron Hollow, 1938.
15 ft, 52 HP, Rouge River, Nankin Mills, 1920.
31 ft, 18,000 HP. Mississippi, St. Paul, 1924.
30 ft, 10,000 HP, Menominee River, Iron Mountain, MI, 1923.
20 ft. 88 HP, Saline River, Saline, MI, 1938.

 

[templdl]

Thanks. Something that I was never aware of especially by Ford himself.

 

[Besoeker]

FWIW.....
One of the first projects I worked on was a water turbine.
It was, and still is, in a paper mill.
Like many mills of its era, 1895 for this one, it was near a stream.

The turbine, a Gilkes, drove a DC generator. The mill motors were DC. Still are, as a matter of fact.
But time moves on, technology advances, and the control was changed to SCR.
The DC generators were no longer required.
But, the mill owner saw this as a bit of a waste of energy.

So we designed a mains commutated inverter. It was 1600Adc.
Quite big now.
But that was around 1975.

 

[mgookin]

The state of Florida legislature recently passed a bill to rename a bridge in our town the Henry Ford Bridge. Ford had a home next door to Thomas Edison here. Firestone was on the other side. They all hung out here in the winters. Edison had quite a laboratory here (it's still here).

One caveat of renaming the bridge is both the city and the county have to pass ordinances renaming the bridge for the state bill to become law.

So someone digs up some Hitler stuff saying Ford & Hitler were buddies and that Ford was some racist or whatever. They get all public about it and raise a ruckus.

My argument is George Washington was a terrorist who overtook a government and he's on the currency.

Everyone has something arguable from sometime in their life about their character. So what.

Looks like we'll be keeping the name "Caloosahatchee Bridge" for now. Calusa is a native American indian tribe from the region and "hatchee" means river in their language.

 

[gar]

140921-1642 EDT

mgookin:

To the best of my knowledge Henry Ford never had any contact with Hitler.

A classmate of mine and his father were in Mr. Ford's office one day in the mid 1930s. I will guess about 1936. My classmate's father's office was immeadiately adjacent to Mr. Ford's with a connecting door between the offices. Mr. Ford ask them into his office. The purpose was that Mr. Ford wanted my classmate's father's impression of Hitler. As a German immigrant his opinion was very negative. It should be noted that Ford Motor Company had extensive facilities in Germany.

In contrast I had a friend whose father was a GM executive, one that was involved in the reorganization of GM in the 1920s, and in the mid 1930s my friend and his family actually had dinner with Hitler. Also GM had extensive facilities in Germany.

Back to the Ford Village Industries. Probably none of these were ever profitable, but they served a purpose for Mr. Ford, and helped out those that worked in those plants. Not everything Ford did was profit making. The dams of many of these small plants still exist, but most, if not all, do not produce power.

At the Fairlane Estate, in recent times, the dam and generators were producing power that was converted from DC to AC and sold to DTE. Throughout Mr. Ford's life Fairlane operated on DC. I do not know what method was used to power radios, phonographs, amplifiers, and other devices that were normally AC powered. Certainly AC-DC radios could be used, but these, as standard products, were not high power amplifiers. Mr. Ford did have a Zenith all band AC-DC, and battery powered portable radio from about 1940.

There would be no problem building a special amplifier with high power capability that would work from either 120 or 240 V DC, but it would be special. In the areas I was in I never heard of any such special amplifiers. But I had direct knowledge of the Zenith portable.

.

 

[bphgravity]

If you ever find yourself in SW Florida and would like a private tour of the Edison Winter Estates, Research Laboratory and Museum, send me a message and I will hook you up...

 

[gar]

140923-1549 EDT

Bryan:

Thank you for the invitation. I have never been in Flordia. It would be interesting, but the probability is not high.

I have been in the original Fort Myers Laboratory in Greenfield Village, and two of my classmates father's worked on the development of the first monoblock Ford V8 in that lab. The small steam engine and probably the associated generator were used for the dynamometer test load on the engine.

More on river dams. We have several dams along the Huron River, other than Ford ones, that have had, do have, or could have electric power generation. Some discussion appears in http://annarborchronicle.com/2009/06/12/hydropower-at-argo-dam/

With predictions that new coal power plants will have to charge $0.10/kWh small hydro plants may again become practical. The above article seems to talk about $0.06/kWh for small hydro.

In Michigan we have substantial activity in wind, and batteries.

.