Vintage Photograph of Historic Comal Power Plant Building in New Braunfels Texas Hill Country
by Silvio Ligutti
Title
Vintage Photograph of Historic Comal Power Plant Building in New Braunfels Texas Hill Country
Artist
Silvio Ligutti
Medium
Photograph - Photography
Description
From Wikipedia,
The Comal Power Plant was originally a lignite (brown coal) power generating facility, built starting in 1925, in New Braunfels, Comal County, Texas. It was decommissioned in the 1970s, and was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2004. It has since been converted to The Landmark Lofts apartments. At its peak, the plant supplied about 70,000 kWh.
The plant was built near the Comal Canal, which was the main source of water to cool the turbines and generators. Power was derived from fuel-burning stream generators, it was not a hydroelectric plant. The Comal Power Plant supplied power to central Texas, as well as several nearby military bases, particularly during World War II when the plant was temporarily under the direction of the United States War Department.
The plant was designed to use lignite, a low energy form of coal that, while relatively inexpensive, required special shipping and processing to use as a fuel source. Once natural gas was made available in the area around 1927, the plant began a conversion to natural gas as its primary heat source with fuel oil as a secondary source. This was completed in 1929, and reduced the manpower needed by the plant from a peak of 135 workers to less than half of that number. During the Great Depression, the plant reduced the work week from six to five days to allow additional workers to be added to the payroll.
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Uploaded
March 6th, 2019
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