"Another year is coming, when will we succeed in securing the funds for the construction of this power station?" Pan Yan, director of the Institute of Electricity of the Engineering Technology Research Institute, whose temples were already a little white, said with a little melancholy. Next to him was Ma Xiaopeng, general manager of the East Coast Electric Power Company, and the two second-generation members were sitting in a courtyard on the edge of the Huangyang River, drinking boredly.

Compared with Pan Yan, a person who has devoted half of his life to the study of electricity, Ma Xiaopeng may be more relieved. Because he came to Dongdian Company, a state-owned enterprise that is stronger than a shell company, to take office, it was the arrangement of the elders and the deployment of the family, and he had to obey, so he ended his corrupt life in the past, and went to this boring but not low-level confidential enterprise to preside over the work.

The East Coast Electric Power Company is now his one-third of an acre of land, but the company, which has a lot of land in Patagonia, currently has only a few hundred workers, divided into three workshops to produce some power equipment. One of them is the electrical instrument workshop, specializing in the production of various electrical measuring instruments, for the use of research and teaching departments, the business volume is not very large, purely from the economic point of view, it is a loss, all rely on the state financial appropriation to support; The second is the battery workshop, specializing in the production and maintenance of lead-acid batteries, supplying the major domestic cable telegraph stations, which is actually profitable, but not much, because the state compulsorily requires TEPCO not to sell lead-acid batteries at high prices, for fear of damaging the development of the cable telegraph industry.

The last workshop is the generator production workshop, with a lot of the most advanced industrial machine tools in China, the precision is very high, it can be said that the two heavy, railway machinery, Tieling heavy industry and other industry leaders use what machine tools, they can use what machine tools, and may even be exceeded. The main reason is that the production and processing of power equipment is actually a job that requires relatively high precision, and you have to use high-precision machine tools, unless you are willing to endure inefficient primitive manual production.

Of course, with TEPCO's current business situation, it is definitely impossible to afford these high-tech machines, and the way they obtain them is mainly from the Ministry of Science and Technology and the Engineering Technology Research Institute. So, don't look at Ma Xiaopeng's mouth all day long shouting how the country suppresses them and how to ignore them, in fact, it's all nonsense! If the state really ignores you, as for sending all those latest high-speed machine tools here? This shows that the country attaches great importance to TEPCO and has high expectations.

At present, the generator production workshop has produced more than a dozen kinds of generators, including small hand-cranked and foot-operated generators for teaching and scientific research, as well as equipment that can really be used to generate electricity, such as the self-excited generator launched by the factory about seven or eight years ago, a power generation equipment that Pan Yan once sold everywhere.

Now, after seven years of continuous improvement, TEPCO's technicians have corrected some of these fatal flaws and made them more realistic. For example, in view of the high calorific value of this type of generator, TEPCO has organized in-depth research and has gradually improved this defect: they use a laminated iron-core stator and then use the latest rubber as the insulation layer of the coil, which greatly reduces the eddy current and reduces the heat generation, making it possible to make this generator larger, although there are still many technical problems in this.

At present, East Coast Power has designed a new single-phase alternator. After repeated research and demonstration, they are very confident that this generator has great practical significance and can be used for commercial power generation, so in the middle of this year, Ma Xiaopeng reported to the Ministry of Science and Technology, asking the higher authorities to allocate funds to build a power generation room in Patagonia to make their generator that still exists on the drawings.

However, after the report was submitted, it was like a mud cow in the sea, and there was no more news. As a last resort, Ma Xiaopeng personally took a boat to the capital, and looked for someone in the Ministry of Science and Technology for a long time, and finally Qiu Haiyang, Minister of Science and Technology, "blew him away". Minister Qiu bluntly told him that the plan to build a power plant in Patagonia will not be approved for the time being, unless TEPCO organizes a strong team to further improve the generator and use as many machine-made components as possible, so as to effectively reduce the cost, which is still too high.

Ma Xiaopeng was a little depressed when he heard this. Qiu Haiyang asked him to reduce the cost of this single-phase alternator, which involved a lot of design problems, armatures, windings, commutators and even the high-speed steam engine used to drive the generator needed to be changed, which was a big project, and some of them were busy.

But from another point of view, Qiu Haiyang's opinion is actually reasonable. In today's East Coast Republic, the application of the steam engine can be said to be in full swing, beginning to go deep into all aspects of society, involving enterprises, workers and designers, almost every year are launching new steam engine models, the application of the compound and triple rise has also begun to become widespread. In such a situation, how could the state abandon the steam engine, which had invested heavily and involved many interest groups, for the sake of immature generator technology? You know, the profits in this have not been completely squeezed out, and the Europeans have just embarked on the road of large-scale application of the steam engine, and everything is not yet time.

In desperation, Ma Xiaopeng could only return to Patagonia unhappily, convey the opinions of the superiors, continue to improve the generator, and lay a good foundation for the construction of power generation houses in the future. After all, the structure of their current generators is indeed a bit complex and not very efficient, so that a considerable proportion of the parts need to be made by hand, which is the main factor in its high cost.

In the next step, TEPCO's main task is to work hard in this area and truly design a mature, stable, efficient and low-cost alternator. Before that, they probably could only continue to rely on selling lead-acid batteries and related after-sales services (charging batteries with DC generators), selling electrical instruments, and selling small generators to scientific research institutions, which is quite difficult to think about.

"Mr. Ma, I advise you not to think about what you have and don't have. Lao Tzu has already seen through the fucking fact that the grandsons of the Ministry of Science and Technology and the Academy of Engineering are discriminating against our electrical department. The people who worked on the steam engine were all arrogant, weren't they just fitters, what was there to be afraid of? Pan Yan took a sip of wine and said disdainfully: "In the past, when my father was still there, he spent three days grinding with them, and he was almost angry to death. After all these years, I don't think they've changed at all, and they're still so fucked up, so let's save some effort, don't get up too much hope, and get a little bit back. ”

"yes, a little bit is a little bit." Ma Xiaopeng took a long breath and said.

In fact, it was not that he didn't get a penny when he went to the Ministry of Science and Technology this time, but in fact he still had to get some. The Minister of Science and Technology, Qiu Haiyang, was more interested in the arc lamp lighting system he brought with him, and specially approved his research fund of 20,000 yuan, so that he could go back and start research and development as soon as possible. Minister Qiu particularly emphasized that the money must be earmarked, can not be moved to other places, arc lamps can not be limited to the laboratory, if possible, or as soon as possible to enter the practical stage - even if it cannot be used commercially on a large scale for the time being, it can also be installed in the form of government procurement in some lighthouses and other occasions, of course, this requires supporting generators, which is a later story.

Ma Xiaopeng is a little incomprehensible to Qiu Haiyang's brain circuit. This Nima's application to build a power generation house and a power station was not approved, so that it was redesigned, and the arc lamp that had not yet been shadowed was approved for money, isn't this a joke? Is the order reversed? He estimated that Qiu Haiyang really couldn't save face (mainly to see Ma Wanpeng's face), and he couldn't approve a project, so he abandoned the hugely expensive power station project and released the arc lamp with a smaller cost.

But Ma Xiaopeng is really not very optimistic about the prospects of arc lights. For no other reason, gas lamps have been rolled out across the country, and the government has invested a lot of money every year in the laying of gas pipelines, the installation of lamps, and the manufacture of gas generators. At this time, there is no going back – at least not in the short term – and it is impossible for them to abandon the gas lighting system that has been rolled out in favor of their arc lamps, which is not in line with the laws of economics. Therefore, as Qiu Haiyang originally said to him, the future of arc lamps is still in the fields where gas lamps have not been rolled out, such as lighthouses along the coast and along the river, etc., and slowly break through little by little, which is the right way.

But that's all for later. For the time being, in the foreseeable future, the East Coast Power Company should continue to be in a relatively difficult state, with advanced electrification productivity being suppressed by backward steam engine productivity.

"Mr. Ma, as for TEPCO, I think it can only be maintained in the next few years. Anyway, just like that, step by step. It is nothing more than to continue to improve the generator, reduce costs, and at the same time do a good job in the after-sales service of other products and cultivate more talents. In fact, we don't need to worry too much about these things, so in order to avoid boredom, I think you should go with me to engage in the business of electrolyzed salt water. Pan Yan said.

Pan Yan's brother once ran a direct current electrolysis of saturated salt water to prepare chlorine gas, and business has been good for many years. This time, they plan to expand the scale and build a production line for other products using chlorine to enrich the product range and expand the market. It just so happens that Pan Yan and his institute of electrical engineering have made a certain breakthrough in theoretical research in the past seven or eight years, and the DC generators manufactured by East Coast Company are becoming more and more reliable, so they can effectively reduce the production cost of this enterprise.

Moreover, as the saying goes, the building near the water gets the first month, and it is not easy for others to buy controlled commodities such as generators, and it is not easy for them to get licenses. The two of them had actually talked about it before, Pan Yan's younger brother was in charge of preparing for the construction of a new production line, and Ma Xiaopeng sent his son to help, wouldn't it be beautiful for everyone to get rich together?

Of course, as the foundation of everyone's life, the research of electricity cannot be left behind. The alternator must continue to be improved, and the research of arc lamps must be stepped up, but the research of other transformers and transmission networks must also continue, and none of them can be left behind. Even if it is not promoted on a large scale for various reasons, it will definitely not run in the future, and it is inevitable that electricity will replace the steam engine!