GE and Westinghouse dominated the presentation and publication of technical papers at the AIEE (later IEEE/PES) conferences such as the annual Winter and Summer Meetings where they were particularly prominent and, in the spirit of true competition, they would always try to find the other's weakness! Everywhere you looked there were GE or Westinghouse advertisements such as "You Can Be Sure if It's Westinghouse" or GE's, "Progress Is Our Most Important Product" in print, on a billboard, or on television. Sadly, today, it is as though they never existed. Whatever happened? This article is a brief history from the perspective of a retired electric utility engineer, followed by some answers.

The Learning Curve

The 1920s to 1930s was a period of original thinking in the analytical sense. A utility system consisted of a number of separate components, namely turbines and governors, generators and excitation systems, transformers, transmission lines, and distribution equipment, that must all work together in harmony to supply a combined customer load. Both companies did much to show how this could best be done. As they expanded, both were involved in major hydroelectric installations in North America and around the world, notably Russia. Both companies established international offices.

The Period of Rapid Growth

The postwar period also saw the development of innovative ideas in the design of utility equipment and stations in North America. In power station control rooms, for example, the old ebony asbestos panels with their hard-to-read instruments and relays that stuck out from the panels became "modern" with the introduction of sheet steel duplex panels and flush mounted devices. Even the protection relays were unique with the facility to withdraw them from their cases for maintenance without the need for disturbing the panel wires. Automatic synchronizers were introduced as well as the start of automation. Metal-enclosed switchgear cubicles were developed to contain the bus bars, instrument transformers, and draw-out air circuit breakers, replacing hazardous open bus and fixed frame-mounted oil circuit breakers. Isolated phase bus ducts replaced insulated cables, and high voltage ring buses (or their derivatives) were introduced instead of main and auxiliary buses for switching stations. Even lowly fuses were replaced by molded case circuit breakers for domestic and industrial use. Both GE and Westinghouse competed for the sale of all of these items.

Oil-filled transformers and circuit breakers located inside a powerhouse were always a concern for utility plant operators because of fire hazard. The first step in designing postwar plants was to place the hazard outside the powerhouse. Both companies introduced low-voltage, indoor dry-type (air cooled) auxiliary transformers as a safety measure. Also, as an alternative to the dry type, both companies offered transformers containing special flameproof oils called Inerteen (Westinghouse) or Pyranol (GE) for small low-voltage, low-capacity units. A few decades later it was discovered that this type of oil contained high levels of PCBs, now considered to be a carcinogen, and their manufacture was banned and their presence in electrical equipment reduced or eliminated.

Hydroelectric stations took on a new look. Prewar stations were designed with the generators rising majestically from the main floor for all to see. Those units were air cooled and looked impressive. However, postwar designs placed the generators nearly flush with the floor, and water-cooling was introduced by means of heat exchangers. The two companies offered competitive designs with efficiency becoming more and more important for economic reasons. Each had its own unique design for thrust bearings, a significant feature that permitted development of large, modern vertical hydro machines (Figure 2 and Figure 3).

The largest size steam turbine/ generator before WWII was around 100 MW. With heavy load demands exceeding utility capability in the 1950s and 1960s, ratings increased rapidly. Unit sizes reached as high as 1300 MW for some nuclear plants, but the optimum rating today has dropped to around 600 MW.

Transmission line voltages were also increasing in size and capability. In the 1930s, 230-kV lines were fairly common but the highest was a nonstandard level at 287.5 kV from Boulder Dam to Los Angeles built in 1936. Greater loads and longer distances required higher voltage levels. Therefore, a great deal of transformer and transmission line research was conducted by both companies, particularly GE in association with the Edison Electric Institute. Strong competition resulted in both companies being able, by 1972, to build very large units with voltage ratings up to 765 kV for the American Electric Power Corporation in the United States Midwest (Figure 4).

In the late 1950s, Westinghouse introduced and marketed education for utility engineers. Located in their Education Center in Williamsburg, Pennsylvania, post-graduate courses on power system analysis were held to bring utility engineers together from North America and around the world. I attended the 1961 session. Similarly, GE initiated the "Power Systems Engineering" course in Schenectady, New York. A great number of young engineers benefited from those experiences. The main benefit for both companies, of course, was the future sale of utility equipment and consulting services.

Those were the days when the slide rule was king! Few utilities, with the exception of the large ones such as American Electric Power and Ontario Hydro, had the necessary engineering expertise or analytical tools to tackle the problems relating to system stability, insulation coordination, and short circuit faults. Both GE and Westinghouse developed the study of these subjects with in-house system network calculators and newly emerging computers. The courses they presented introduced utility engineers to the capabilities of these new tools.

In the 1920s and 1930s, Edith Clarke of GE and C.F. Wagner and Robert Evans of Westinghouse advanced the development of "symmetrical components" analysis conceived by Dr. Charles L. Fortescue of Westinghouse as early as 1918. It wasn't until after WWII that the tool was fully accepted for determining the magnitude of short circuit currents and related voltages for unbalanced faults on three phase circuits. Incidentally, for history buffs, Charles LeGeyt Fortescue was born in 1876 in York Factory, located in northern Manitoba on the mouth of the Hayes River that drains into Hudson Bay. In those days York Factory was a major Hudson's Bay Company fur trading post but is no longer inhabited and is now an historic national park site.

Both companies also developed the principles of lightning protection by means of overhead transmission line ground wires and the coordination of insulation protection using lightning arresters. As knowledge and understanding of these fields advanced, reduced basic impulse levels (BIL) were introduced in all transformer high-voltage windings. This resulted in significant economies when properly applied. Today all these things are taken for granted.

Foreign competition became more prevalent in the 1950s and 1960s. The Europeans, particularly the Swiss company Brown Boveri, developed high-voltage air-blast circuit breakers that were superior to the bulk-oil type commonly made by GE and Westinghouse, both in maintenance and interrupting speed. European manufacturers also offered minimum-oil type high voltage circuit breakers. While many bulk-oil breakers are still in service today, they are gradually being superseded by the air-blast or SF6 design. European manufacturers started competing for large power transformers and steam turbine generator sets, particularly in Canada. Japanese manufacturers provided competition on hydraulic turbines and generators.

In 1954, the Swedish firm ASEA demonstrated the world's first successful high voltage direct current (HVDC) installation. With a capacity of 20 MW, power was transmitted at 100 kV by underwater cable from mainland Sweden a distance of 96 km to the island of Gotland. The success of this project lay in the development of high-voltage mercury arc converter valves coupled with high-voltage transformers. This opened up world-wide opportunities in that field of transmission, particularly for schemes that required underwater cables or long-distance, high-capacity transmission lines such as the Pacific Inter-tie between the states of Washington and California (1960s) followed by Manitoba Hydro's Nelson River two bipole 3700 MW, 500 kV, 900 km system (1972 and 1978). Those schemes proved that transmission costs were lower and dynamic performance and environmental factors were better than with high voltage ac. The early schemes used mercury arc valves, but with the advent of high voltage thyristors developed by Bell/GE in the mid 1960s, subsequent projects used these instead. Both GE and Westinghouse were faced with strong European competition in this field and had difficulty achieving a foothold (Figure 5.)

After the serious events of Three Mile Island (1979) and Chernobyl (1986), the nuclear industry took a severe blow, and, combined with recession trends, cutbacks by both companies were inevitable. Today, recovery of the nuclear power industry is seen to be promising, and both the new GE and the revised Westinghouse are competing for this business universally.

The New Millennium

On the other hand, in the face of ever increasing foreign competition, GE managed to retain its major role in the electrical world and has become a multibusiness company including fuel cells and the production of hydrogen, photovoltaics, medical systems research, diagnostic monitoring, imaging, nanotechnology, television broadcasting (NBC), entertainment, plastics, oil and natural gas development, and locomotives. It is also very good at producing quality jet aircraft engines and has the world's largest capacity to do so. It continues to make steam and combustion turbine/generators and wind turbine/generators for utility purposes and does very well in the hydro turbine/generator business with manufacturing facilities in Canada, Norway, China, and Brazil.

Also, partnerships with other companies in areas such as security systems and traffic management systems have been developed. In addition to the manufacture of goods, GE also provides service for the maintenance of their products, as well as consulting services. One of its largest revenue sources is financial investment and insurance. GE is one of the world's largest companies with revenues of US$134.2 billion in 2003 and is the only investor-owned company in the Dow Jones Industrial Index that was also included in the original index in 1896!

In the words of Jack Welch, former CEO of GE, "We have only two basic premises. The first is that we will run only businesses that are number one or number two in their global markets. The second premise is that in addition to the strength, resources, and reach of a big company, we are committed to developing the sensitivity, the leanness, the simplicity, and the agility of a small company. We want the best of both." GE still uses the old logo with the curlicued circle that is reminiscent of the end view of a rotating electric machine and that originated with the Thomson Houston Company, a GE predecessor company. It is probably the most recognized of all trademarks in the world.

The March/April 2004 issue of this magazine ran a memorial to GE's Charles Concordia. He was regarded as one of the best-known and respected power system engineers for most of the 20th century, and retired Westinghouse engineers would support that. He died at age 95 having been engrossed in his passion for over 70 years!

Without a doubt, both GE and Westinghouse have made major contributions to the electrical industry and the world at large since 1876, and all utilities owe them a debt of gratitude. During their early period, competition brought out the best in each other and together they influenced the development of national and international standards, codes, and guidelines, and published an enormous amount of reference literature for the benefit of countless engineers. We might even ask the question "Where would the IEEE be without the contributions of GE and Westinghouse?"

Although no longer used, the meaning of the slogans "You Can Be Sure If It's Westinghouse" and "Progress Is Our Most Important Product" is still going strong. It may be in a different fashion, yet their legacy continues.

For Further Reading

GE Annual Report, 2003.

Electrical Transmission and Distribution Reference Book, East Pittsburgh: Westinghouse Electric Corp, 1950.

C.L. Sulzberger, "Triumph of AC," IEEE Power Energy Mag., vol. 1, no. 3, pp. 64–67, May/June 2003.

C.L. Sulzberger, "Triumph of AC, 2," IEEE Power Energy Mag., vol. 1, no. 4, pp. 70–73, July/Aug. 2003.

T.J. Blalock, "The first polyphase system," IEEE Power Energy Mag., vol. 2, no. 2, pp. 63–66, Mar./Apr. 2004.

EHV Transmission Line Reference Book, Edison Electric Institute, 1968.

S. Massey, "Who killed Westinghouse," Pittsburgh PostGazette [Online]. Available: http://www.post-gazette.com/westinghouse

Westinghouse [Online]. Available: www.westinghouse.com;

Siemens AG [Online]. Available: www.siemens.com