ELECTRICAL POWER: NATIONAL AND RE GIONAL SCHEMES. The loth century has witnessed the world-wide development of national and regional schemes of electrical power generation and transmission. Development has been very unequal in different countries. Thus, in the United States, with its possession of magnificent coalfields, oilfields, natural gas supplies and water-power, the schemes have been based upon varied resources scattered over an enormous territory. In Italy, on the other hand, where coal is, for practical purposes, non-existent, but where there is a fine store of power in lake and mountain stream, the regional plans made have been almost entirely based upon transmission from gigantic hydro-electric generating stations. In Great Britain, where water-power is com paratively small, while the coalfields are fine and extensive, the plans made are necessarily based chiefly upon generation from the coal supply. In Great Britain development of electrical power generation and transmission has been notably behind that of several other countries, although long before the World War S. Z. Ferranti, when president of the Institute of Electrical Engineers, devoted his presidential address to concrete proposals to establish super-power stations, on the British coalfields and at other places to which coal could be economically transported. to create an all-electrical power-supply. Half a generation was, how ever, to elapse before British legislation set up a central board to develop a British national electric system.
In the following sections is given an account of the regional electrical power schemes of Great Britain, Germany, France, Italy, Switzerland, Holland and other European countries, and of Canada, followed by a description of the extensive developments which have taken place in the United States. (L. C. M.)