Use of Electric Service in Industry

Abstract

A postulate of this article is, therefore, that the electric service company deals in and supplies a service and not a commodity. Long ago we were taught that energy cannot be manufactured-an axiom which may again be put on the defensive but is as yet to be accepted as basic-but it can be transformed, stored, changed from potential to dynamic form and in general adapted for shipment and use in fairly efficient manner. Electric service is comprised of capacity and energy-producing power and work. Capacity and power are unidimensional; work and energy are areas or integrated values resulting from a plotting of the ordinate of capac, ity or power along the abscissa of time. Load factor is the ratio of the mean ordinate of the integrated area to the maximum capacity ordinate. In practice these ordinates are not taken at instantaneous values but as averages through a predetermined time interval of five, ten, fifteen minutes or an hour.