American Forest Congress 379 



housings complete, capable of furnishing 15,000 horse 

 power, would cost nearly $800,000. Such a plant 

 would not be provided with apparatus for the recovery 

 of the bi-products from coal. With the recovery 

 apparatus such a plant would cost, approximately, 

 $175,000 additional. A steam-boiler plant with cross 

 compound condensing engines, capable of producing 

 the same amount of horse power, is estimated roughly 

 to cost $70,000 less than the gas producer plant without 

 the recovery apparatus, and $245,000 less than the gas 

 producer plant with recovery appratus. The labor 

 involved in the operation of a steam plant and a non- 

 recovery gas producer plant would probably be slightly 

 in favor of the former. 



Unfortunately, we have only incomplete comparative 

 figures for the use of lignite in a plant of this kind, and 

 the investigations at St. Louis have been almost of a 

 pioneer nature on this line. But it is evident that 

 either in the case of soft coal or lignite when used in 

 the gas producer plant the saving in fuel would in a 

 short time be more than sufficient to make up for any 

 reasonable difference in the initial cost of that as com- 

 pared with the initial cost of a steam plant of equal 

 •capacity. 



In the present state of development of apparatus for 

 the generation and transmission of electric power, the 

 limit of line voltage is placed at, approximately, 60,000 

 volts, and at this voltage it is possible to transmit 

 effectively electrical power at a distance of 250 miles. 

 This means that a power plant established in the 

 vicinity of coal mines can supply power to a territory 

 having this distance of 250 miles for a radius, or, 

 approximately, 200,000 square miles — more than four 

 times the size of New York, and nearly twice the size 

 of all the New England states and New York included. 



