Port Washington Power Plant:A National Historic

Mechanical EngineeringLandmark

In the beginning . . .

Construction of the first unit at Port Washington PowerPlant began in 1930 and lasted until 1935, creating workfor hundreds of persons during the Great Depression.

T he year was 1929. The Milwau-kee Electric Railway and Light

Company (TMER&L) was operatingthe Commerce, Oneida Street (EastWells) and Lakeside power plants, inaddition to several other small powerplants in the Milwaukee area.

East Wells was the site of the firstsuccessful experiments of burningpulverized coal to produce electricity.The East Wells innovations wereincorporated into the Lakeside PowerPlant, located in St. Francis, Wis.Lakeside was the world’s first plantbuilt to burn pulverized coal ex-clusively, and the first to incorporateradiant superheating into its furnaces.

The demand for electricity on thecompany’s system was increasing, aswas the number of customers.Studies were begun to determinewhat type of power plant would beneeded to meet those increasingdemands.

With a load growth rate of approxi-mately 40,000 kilowatts per year, the

company decided to build several80,000-kilowatt coal-fired units.

The decision of where to build theunits still needed to be made. Themajor portion of the generatingcapacity for the Milwaukee area wasconcentrated at Lakeside, locatedsouth of Milwaukee. It was decidedthat a new plant should be built at apoint north of Milwaukee. This wouldpermit feeding energy into the Mil-waukee area from another source.

The most logical site was at PortWashington, a city with harborfacilities for lake boats bearing coaland other supplies. Port Washingtonalso had good railroad connectionsand an ample supply of cold con-densing water (Lake Michigan) and itwas located about the same distanceas Lakeside from the company’smain bulk substation on Milwaukee’snorthwest side.

The stage was set for the construc-tion of the newest jewel amongTMER&L’s pioneering power plants.

Innovator, pioneer, pacesetter . . .

Charles S. McNeerPresident/Chief Executive OfficerWisconsin Electric Power Company

I nnovator, pioneer, pacesetter. Allof these characterize Wisconsin

Electric and the engineering ac-complishments its employes havebrought about during the company’slong history.

From the early years of The Mil-waukee Electric Railway and Light Co.to the present, Wisconsin Electric hasencouraged employe creativity in find-ing better ways to provide customerswith reliable electric service at areasonable cost.

Wisconsin Electric takes pride inPort Washington Power Plant andits past and present employes as theplant joins two other companyfacilities as national historic mechan-ical engineering landmarks.

The construction and operation ofVulcan Street Power Plant in Apple-ton, Wis., in 1882 marked the firstEdison hydroelectric central station tooperate in North America. That plantreceived landmark status from theAmerican Society of MechanicalEngineers (ASME), American Societyof Civil Engineers and the Institute ofElectrical and Electronics Engineersin 1977.

East Wells Power Plant in down-town Milwaukee was the site of thefirst time pulverized coal was burned

successfully in furnaces of stationarysteam boilers. East Wells receivedlandmark status from ASME earlierthis year.

Port Washington was the world’smost efficient power plant between1935 and 1948, and is furtherevidence of the company’s innovativeapproach to problem solving. Today,we’re still finding solutions. In an erawhen electricity is more valuable thanever before, we’re developing newways to use it more efficiently.

Our mission today, as in the past, isto provide customers with an ade-quate supply of reasonably pricedenergy. That will require new ap-proaches, open minds, creativity anddetermination. It will require con-tinued application of the soundbusiness and engineering practiceswhich have served our company well.

In the past 100 years, the electricutility industry has built an impressiverecord of achievements. The peoplewho built Wisconsin Electric—fromour founders to those who operateour company today—always haverisen to the challenge, and havedeveloped a tradition of finding newand better ways to supply our cus-tomers’ energy needs.

It is not a tradition we take lightly.

Earth-moving equipment scooped 275,000 cubic yardsof dirt out of a bluff on the Lake Michigan shoreline tomake room for the plant. The dirt was used to form the fillfor the plant’s 1,000-foot-long coal dock.

The best of times,the worst of times . . .

T he construction of Port Wash-ington Power Plant came at the

best and worst of times for TMER&L.The company knew it had the

expertise to build the plant. It had ateam of steam and electrical en-gineers whose skill and expertise inpower plant design was unexcelled.Only John Anderson was missingfrom the original team that pioneeredin the use of pulverized fuel at EastWells and Lakeside.

But the year 1929 also brought theGreat Depression. The New YorkStock Exchange had just experiencedits earth-shattering crash. Millions ofpeople across the country either lost,or would lose, their jobs. Money wastight.

The demand for electricity onTMER&L’s system began to slowdown. But the company proceeded

with plans to build the plant, confidentthat a return of more nearly normalconditions would justify its need.

As the late S. B. Way, thenpresident of TMER&L, remarked:“While our business is subject toserious reverses during hard times,the general trend is toward greateruse of electricity, and it is necessary toplan well in advance so that extensionof facilities can proceed in an orderlyand sound manner.”

The company saw the situationalso as a means of helping the peopleit served. Continuing work throughthe Depression years would “provideemployment for hundreds on the jobitself . . . and probably severalthousand others in the mills andshops that fabricate the buildingmaterials, boiler, generator and otherequipment,” Way said.

Groundbreaking ceremonies for the plant project wereheld May 26, 1930, as Port Washington Mayor August F.Kruke manned the steam shovel.

Construction begins . . .

C onstruction began on PortWashington Power Plant on May

26, 1930.Equipment manufactured in Mil-

waukee, Port Washington and thesurrounding communities was usedwherever possible to keep the moneyin the company’s service area.

The design of the plant was basedon the design and operating expe-riences at Lakeside. Lakeside alreadyhad built a world-wide reputation, andhad pioneered more significantand important developments thanany other power plant.

Some of the more notable achieve-ments incorporated into the PortWashington plant design included theburning of pulverized coal, the suc-cessful use of 1,200-pound-pressuresteam and the introduction of radiantsuperheating surfaces into the furnace.

While Lakeside was noted forpioneering achievements, there still

were many improvements to be madeon those achievements in the PortWashington design. One of the mostimportant was the design of the unititself. There was only one boiler forthe single turbine-generator. Therewas one set of transformers, one132,000-volt transmission line andone set of auxiliaries. The plantdesigners determined that simplifica-tion of the plant’s design wouldsimplify its operation.

Higher steam temperatures wereplanned. Temperatures of 825 de-grees Fahrenheit at the throttle, andat the reheat point, were designed toconserve fuel by being able to gen-erate a given electrical output withfewer heat units. Generation of elec-tricity at 22,000 volts also wasplanned as a move to reduce theamount of copper required for cable,switches and the bus structure.

Workers assemble the plant’s 80,000-kilowatt Allis-Chalmers turbine-generator, one of the major piecesof equipment purchased through area companies as partof Wisconsin Electric’s effort to keep Depression-timemoney within the service area.

The completed turbine at port washington.

PORTWASHINGTON

POWER PLANTDEDICATED

TOP U B L I C S E R V I CE

S E P T E M B E R 1 , 1 9 3 5DURING THE CELEBRATION

~ O F ~THE ONE HUNDREDTH

ANNIVERSARYOF THE FOUNDING

OF PORT WASHINGTON

THEMILWAUKEE ELECTRIC

RAILWAY AND LIGHTCOMPANY

The dedication of Port Washington Power Plant coincidedwith the 100th anniversary of the founding of the city inwhich it is located.

The biggest boiler ever . . .

The boiler had three drums—twosteam drums at the top and one muddrum below—all interconnected withboiler tubes bent to give a designwhich provided the best circulation ofwater within the tubes. Such circula-tion was necessary to transmit heataway from the metal of the tubesquickly, and made for the mostefficient use of the fuel burned in thefurnace.

Construction began in 1931 onwhat then was the largest high-

pressure boiler ever built—a Combus-tion Engineering unit with a capacityof 690,000 pounds of steam an hourand a design pressure of 1,390pounds a square inch.

The furnace was 55 feet wide, witha volume of 57,000 cubic feet. It wasshielded by a water screen, anotherTMER&L innovation developed atEast Wells.

In the turbine room was an 80,000-kilowatt tandem-compound Allis-Chalmers turbine, operating at 1,800rpm. The generator was air-cooled,and operated at 22,000 volts. Trans-formers boosted that voltage to138,000 volts.

It took more than five years andabout $7.5 million to build PortWashington. The building of such aplant normally would not require sucha long time, but the years following1929 were not normal years. Despitedepressed business conditions andtroubled time, however, the companypersistently pursued the project.

The plant finally was ready to beginoperation in the fall of 1935, andgenerated electricity for the first timeon Oct. 14 of that year. The com-pletion of the plant coincided with thecity of Port Washington’s centennial.

Assembly of one of the plant’s boiler drums being fittedwith boiler tubes

Something special . . .

Plant operating employes had thenormal challenges associated

with operating a new plant. Since newdesigns also were incorporated, em-ployes had to verify the designs todetermine whether the plant wouldperform as expected.

Compound-turbine operation withreheat never before had been at-tempted at any TMER&L plant. It wasthen decided to give employes prac-tice in starting up, and bringing down,the unit several times before regularoperation was attempted.

The initial shakedown demon-strated that some changes in the

reheater surface were needed. Otheradjustments and minor changes alsowere required. Once they were com-pleted, the plant was returned toservice. It didn’t take long for thecompany—and the world—to learnthat the Port Washington Power Plantwas something special.

Performance records after only afew months of continuous operationshowed that the plant was turning outkilowatt-hours at a higher efficiencythan any other power plant in theworld—even better than the com-pany’s own Lakeside plant.

First delivery of coal to Port Washington—Aug. 1, 1932.

A boiler control operator at Port Washington in 1936,monitoring what was at the time the largest high-pressureboiler ever built.

Port Washington’s first superintendent, Harry Shaver,takes to the controls for the start-up of the plant’sfourth unit Aug. 25, 1949. Looking on are W.A. Yost andC. F. John of Wisconsin Electric.

They planned it that way . . .

A fter five years of service, PortWashington continued to

show a steady decrease in annual netplant heat consumption per kilowatt-hour generated. The plant was inoperation 87.8 percent of the timeand was available for generation over89 percent of the time. This kind ofreliability for such a high-technologyplant was remarkable and demon-strated to the power industry thatsuch technology would not affectreliability adversely.

The plant continued to pile up animpressive record, from the time itwent into operation in 1935 until1948—when newer power plantsadopting the Port Washington andnewer innovations finally surpassed itin overall operation.

In those first 14 years of operation,

the plant consumed 10,800 BTUs forevery kilowatt-hour it produced. Thiswas during a period of time when thenational average for electric powerplant efficiency was well over 18,000BTUs per kilowatt-hour.

New 80,000-kilowatt units wereadded to the plant in 1943, 1948,1949 and 1950, bringing its totalgenerating capacity to the present400,000 kilowatts. The acceleratedsystem load growth is measuredapproximately by the decreasingspacing of installation dates of the fiveunits.

Why did Port Washington Plantproduce such excellent results? G. G.Post, then TMER&L’s vice presidentin charge of power, put it this way:“They planned it that way.”

The “Pebble” House, built in 1848 of stone gatheredalong the Lake Michigan shoreline, and itself a PortWashington landmark. It still stands at the entrance to thePlant.

The National HistoricMechanical Engineering

Landmark Program

T he American Society of Mechanical Engineers(ASME) reactivated its history and heritage program

in September 1971 with the formation of the NationalHistory and Heritage Committee. The committee’s overallobjective is to promote a general awareness of ourtechnological heritage among both engineers and thegeneral public.

One of the committee’s responsibilities is to gatherdata on all works and artifacts with a mechanicalengineering connection that are historically significant tothe profession. It’s an ambitious goal, and one achievedlargely through the volunteer efforts of the section anddivision history and heritage committees and interestedASME members.

Two major programs are carried out by the sections,under the direction of the national committee. One

is a listing of industrial operations and related mechanicalengineering artifacts in local historic engineeringrecords, and the other is the national historic mechan-ical engineering landmark program. The former is arecord of detailed studies of sites in each local area, whilethe latter is a demarcation of local sites which are ofnational significance—people or events which havecontributed to the general development of civilization.

ASME also cooperates with the Smithsonian Institutionin a joint project to contribute historic material to theNational Museum of History and Technology in Wash-ington, D.C. The Smithsonian’s permanent exhibition ofmechanical engineering memorabilia is directed by acurator, who also serves as an ex-officio member ofASME’s national history and heritage committee.

Other historic landmarksPort Washington Power Plant is

the 48th landmark to be des-ignated since the program began in1973. The others are:Watkins Woolen Mill, Wawson, Mo.First All-Welded Steam Drum,Chattanooga, Tenn.Georgetown Steam Plant,Seattle, Wash.Equitable Building Heat PumpSystem, Portland, Ore.Shippingport Atomic PowerStation, Pittsburgh, Pa.Jumbo Nine Engine-Driven Dynamo,Greenfield Village, Dearborn, Mich.Triple Expansion Engine-DrivenDynamo, Greenfield Village, Dearborn, Mich.East Wells (Oneida Street) PowerPlant, Milwaukee, Wis.Ferries and Cliff House Cable RailwayPower House, San Francisco, Calif.Leavitt Pumping Engine, Chestnut HillPumping Station, Brookline, Mass.A.B. Wood Low-Head High-VolumeScrew Pump, New Orleans, La.Portsmouth-Kittery Naval Ship-building Activity, Portsmouth, N.H.102-Inch Boyden HydraulicTurbines, Cohoes, N.Y.5000 KW Vertical Curtis SteamTurbine-Generator, Schenectady, N.Y.

Saugus Iron Works, Saugus, Mass.Pioneer Oil Refinery, Newhall, Calif.Chesapeake & Delaware Canal,Scoop Wheel and Engines,Chesapeake City, Md.

U.S.S. Texas, Reciprocating SteamEngines, Houston, TexasChilds-Irving Hydro Plant, Irving, Ariz.Hanford B-Nuclear Reactor,Hanford, Wash.First Air Conditioning, MagmaCopper Mine, Superior, Ariz.Manitou and Pike’s Peak CogRailway, Colorado Springs, Colo.Edgar Steam-Electric Station,Weymouth, Mass.Mt. Washington Cog Railway, Mt.Washington, N.H.Folsom Power House #1,Folsom, Calif.Crawler Transporters of LaunchComplex 39, J.F.K. Space Center, Fla.Fairmont Water Works,Philadelphia, Pa.U.S.S. Olympia, Vertical ReciprocatingSteam Engines, Philadelphia, Pa.5-Ton “Pit-Cast” Jib Crane,Birmingham, Ala.State Line Generating Unit #1,Hammond, Ind.

Pratt Institute Power GeneratingPlant, Brooklyn, N.Y.Monongahela Incline, Pittsburgh, Pa.Duquesne Incline, Pittsburgh, Pa.Great Falls Raceway and PowerSystem, Paterson, N.J.Vulcan Street Power Plant,Appleton, Wis.Wilkinson Mill, Pawtucket, R.I.New York City Subway System,New York, N.Y.Baltimore & Ohio Railroad,Baltimore, Md.Ringwood Manor Iron Complex,Ringwood, N.J.Joshua Hendy Iron Works,Sunnyvale, Calif.Hacienda La Esperanza Sugar MillStream Engine, Manati, Puerto RicoRL-10 Liquid-Hydrogen RocketEngine, West Palm Beach, Fla.A.O. Smith Automated ChassisFrame Factory, Milwaukee, Wis.Reaction-Type Hydraulic Turbine,Morris Canal, Stewartsville, N.J.Experimental Breeder Reactor(EBR-1), Idaho Falls, IdahoDrake Oil Well, Titusville, Pa.Springfield Armory,Springfield, Mass.

Acknowledgements

American Society of Mechanical EngineersDr. Donald N. Zwiep, presidentDr. Charles E. Jones, president-electWarren C. Fackler, vice president, Region VIDonald MacDougall, field service director, Region VICleo J. Quinn, chairman-history and heritage, Region VI

ASME Milwaukee SectionMichael C. Jakus, chairmanCarl J. Lock, vice chairmanLarry W. Weidmann, secretaryDennis L. Carlson, treasurerRobert F. Jakob, treasurerHarold E. MondeDr. Walter T. FeldtJoseph M. DerraThomas H. Fehring, history and heritageJerome B. Weeden

ASME National History and Heritage CommitteeProf. J. J. Ermenc, chairmanDr. R. Carson Dalzell, secretaryProf. R.S. HartenbergDr. J. Paul HartmanRobert M. Vogel, Smithsonian InstituteCarron Garvin-Donahue, ASME staff liaison

ASME Power Division Executive CommitteeHoward M. Rayner, chairmanRichard W. Sarau, vice chairmanKenneth E. Swan, secretaryConrad M. Ladd, conference chairmanHuberto R. Platz, past chairmanRobert E. Chappell, associate member

CreditsPresentation ceremony arrangements by TomFehring and John Bartel. Brochure written and editedby John Bartel and designed by Allan Wade. Photographscourtesy of Wisconsin Electric Power Company files.

Wisconsin Electric OfficersCharles S. McNeerPresident/Chief Executive OfficerRussell W. BrittExecutive Vice PresidentSol BursteinExecutive Vice PresidentThomas J. CassidySenior Vice PresidentNicholas A. RicciSenior Vice PresidentRobert H. GorskeVice President/General CounselJohn H. McLeanVice President/Customer RelationsRussell A. NilesVice President/Division OperationsHuberto R. PlatzVice President/Engineering and ConstructionPhilip G. SikesVice President/System OperationsRichard E. SkoggVice President/Operating ServicesJohn E. SpeakerVice President/CommunicationsRichard R. PiltzControllerJerry G. RemmelTreasurerJohn H. GoetschSecretaryRichard A. AbdooAssistant Vice President/Corporate PlanningJohn W. FleissnerAssistant SecretaryDawn L. FreitagAssistant SecretaryGordon A. WillisAssistant Treasurer

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