Importance of power costs in paper mill accounting;

              10 HASKINS & SELLS February
The Importance of Power Costs in Paper Mill Accounting
By EDMUND CANBY GAUSE
(A paper read before the Connecticut Valley Division, Cost Association of the
Paper Industry, at Holyoke, Mass., December 12, 1921.)
WHILE proper accounting for power
costs is important in any manu­facturing
industry, it is especially impor­tant
in pulp and paper manufacturing
because of the large amount of power re­quired.
The machinery used in the different
processes—especially pulp grinders, bark­ing
drums, chippers, beaters, paper
machines, etc.—requires a large amount
of power. A large quantity of water is
constantly being used, the pumping of
which requires considerable power. Then
there are the conveyors, steam for diges-tors,
steam for drying the paper, steam for
heating the buildings, electric current for
lighting the buildings, power for the re­pair
shop, etc.
There are three sources of power usually
employed in pulp and paper manufacture
—steam, electricity, and water. Steam
is in practically every case generated in an
adjacent power plant. Electricity may
be either purchased or generated at the
plant. Water power, of course, is avail­able
only if there is proximity to a stream
of water of sufficient size to produce
enough power.
The most economical source of power
is naturally that obtained from the use of
water, but it is rarely the case that there
is a sufficient quantity to meet the re­quirements
of all of the operations in a
pulp and paper mill, so recourse is had to
either steam or electricity, or both, in
order to obtain the necessary amount of
power.
The usual arrangement from an eco­nomical
and efficient power viewpoint,
is probably one in which the grinders are
directly coupled to either electric or water
power, the paper machines directly driven
by either steam, electricity, or water, and
the other machinery driven by electricity
through direct drive or by line shafting.
However, these conditions are not always
met with, as practical paper mill operators
differ in their opinions as to the proper
application of the different sources of
power; and conditions and localities have
much to do with the question.
Power expense may be classified as
follows:
1. Steam generation,
2. Steam distribution (from central
power plant to manufacturing buildings,
and then to departments or machines),
3. Electric current generation,
4. Electric current distribution (from
central power plant to manufacturing
buildings, and then to departments or
machines),
5. Electric current purchased,
6. Water.
There are many cases, of course, where
there is no central power plant, and steam
or electricity, or both, are generated at
each manufacturing building and dis­tributed
direct to departments or machines
within the building.
Power costs comprise the following
elements:
Wages of power house
employes
Fuel
Water.
Lubricants, waste,
etc
Labor and supplies
for repairs and
maintenance
1. 2. 3.
Steam Electric Water
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Water
Steam
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