Hal Wright standing next to the Blackstone Engine in 1998.
Image Credit: Sandon in the Kootenays
March 13, 2022 - 2:25 PM
More than 100-year-old Nikola Tesla technology supplying power to a rural B.C. community can also supply power to electric cars named after the inventor of the alternating current motor.
Tesla visited the Kootenays in the late 1800s in order to promote his alternating current invention, a technology that is still being used in rural Sandon today, said manager Hal Wright of the Sandon power plant, officially known as Silversmith Generating Station.
Its ties to Tesla date back to 1897.
At the time, Sandon was booming with the richest mine in Canada. The community built a hydroelectric system first using direct current with inventor Thomas Edison’s technology, Wright said.
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But thanks to Tesla’s influence in 1898 promoting his technology to different Kootenay locations, the system eventually changed to alternating current.
Tesla’s alternating current motor was also implemented at Bonnington Falls on the Kootenay River and it supplied the town of Rossland with power. At the time, it had the longest high-voltage AC line in the world, Wright said.
“Some of that great electrical history was happening right here in the west. So Tesla was apparently at the time in Colorado experimenting and he was probably asked to come to the Kootenay region,” Wright said, adding he also travelled to Cascade Falls and Sandon.
Although Wright doesn’t know the exact influence Tesla had on the current power plant, a competing power plant made the switch to AC motors in the early 1900s and the assets of that plant were incorporated into the current one when the competitor closed in 1931, likely due to the Great Depression, Wright said.
“That machine has been in 24/7 service here in Sandon and it has (earned), from what we can tell, the all-time record of hours of operation of any machinery in Canada,” he said.
You can still see the machinery today with the Westinghouse Brand, which uses Tesla’s invention, in Sandon.
The Silversmith Generating Station. This generator has been operating continuously since 1897.
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“You can bring your Tesla car up here and charge it with electricity that’s being produced from a machine that’s been operating continuously for well over a lifetime, well over 100 years,” Wright said.
The technology has been deemed one of the best-preserved continuously operating Westinghouse equipment on the planet, Wright said.
Tesla’s technology not only supplies power to Sandon, it also provides electricity to the New Denver, Nakusp and the Silverton area.
“It’s got a very useful function and it’s still absolutely the original equipment.”
Wright believes the inventor would be proud to see his technology still being used more than 100 years later. The 60 hertz system build by Westinghouse in the beginning is now commonplace across North America, he said.
“He probably changed our world more than any other single human being in terms of technology because he developed the first reliable way of transmitting power over any distance and it’s connected our world,” Wright said. “If he only knew what he’d done.”
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