Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
The droughts of the 1920s not only highlighted the utility of interconnected grids; they
also revealed a water supply problem, the limits of hydropower, and a technological plat-
eau. James B. Duke and other energy company executives had championed white coal as
a solution to southeastern economic development and energy independence, but after the
1925 drought, Duke no longer accepted hydroelectric dams as the energy-generating stand-
ard. 69 Both Georgia Power's and Duke Power's hydroelectric expectations and risk man-
agement shifted radically in the following years, particularly as black-coal-fueled steam
technology became an increasingly efficient and economical method for generating base
loads. Despite continued investment in hydroelectric dams to produce peak power when
consumer demands exceeded base load supply, the 1925 southeastern drought led the com-
panies on a technological path from a hydro plateau back to coal-fired steam generation
plants. The shift away from renewable energy to fossil fuels as the primary energy source
might look like an abrupt about-face, but when the companies transitioned back to coal,
they never distanced themselves from southeastern rivers or existing artificial reservoirs.
Energy producers stopped relying on water falling on turbines to produce energy and turned
instead to burning coal and transforming liquid water into pressurized steam to spin tur-
bines. Throughout the remainder of the twentieth century, southeastern energy compan-
ies—specifically Duke Power—built coal-fired and nuclear power plants on the shores of
the same reservoirs engineers originally built to conserve water for hydroelectric genera-
tion, and the companies also built some new reservoirs for new coal-fired plants. 70 Fur-
thermore, after the 1925 drought, Georgia Power's chief executive abandoned plans to
build new hydroelectric white coal projects on north Georgia's Chattooga and Coosawat-
tee Rivers and instead invested in black coal plants on the Chattahoochee River upstream
of metro Atlanta and on the Ocmulgee River near Macon. 71 White coal was no longer the
industry standard, but water supplies remained critical for black coal electrical generation
facilities.
The droughts of the 1920s also forced engineers to think differently about water supply.
Engineers who maintained the elaborate hydraulic systems increasingly learned how to
conserve and utilize water to maximize their companies' profits while also protecting ex-
pensive infrastructure. After nearly twenty-five years of managing dams, artificial reser-
voirs, and auxiliary coal-fired steam plants along the Catawba River, Duke Power employ-
ees understood that “the principal problem is to operate” the combination of storage reser-
voirs and run-of-river hydroelectric “plants in connection with the steam plants so as to
secure the maximum kilowatt-hour output from the available river flow.” The region's cli-
mate and rivers' behavior made it clear that not only was there great “variation in river flow
from wet to dry season,” but there was “also a considerable variation from year to year,”
making “it very difficult to map out” energy production schedules and “secure the maxim-
um output from the hydro plants.” In other words, weather and consumer behavior were un-
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