POWER PROSPECTS

Auckland Star, Volume LXXIV, Issue 109, 10 May 1943, Page 4

POWER PROSPECTS

WINTER'S BIG TEST

NORTH ISLAND EXPANSION

(0.C.) WELLINGTON, this day. The Waikaremoana hydro-electric plant will soon be producing more power, so if the North Island can get through the next few months, as it probably can if all power users will economise, prospects will begin to look up.

At the beginning of this year one .new unit of 20,000 k.w. was put into operation at Waikaremoana, and by next winter a second new 20,000 k.w. unit should be in commission, all things going well at sea. This further addition to generating power may, in fact, be operating within a few months, for a great deal of the equipment is already here, but it will be too late to help this winter. So rapid has been the increase in demand that the two new 20,000 sets may only just get through the 1944 winter, but the position will be easier than to-day. There is still ahead another big development in Waikaremoana to be completed in 1945 or 1946, and this plus the second big Waikato scheme at Karapiro, below Arapuni, will give a definite margin of generating capacity over demand. Waikaremoana is a triple-station scheme; three stations, stepped one above another, will be fed from the lake. The first station, at Tuai, was put into operation in 1929. The second station, at Piripaua, two and a half miles below Tuai, was completed recently, and one 20,000 k.w. unit is in operation. The third station will be situated a little over a mile above Tuai. It will draw water direct from the lake through two tunnels and pipe lines, supply, ing two units, each of 17,000 k.w. The water will be re-used at Tuai and Piripaua.

First work is being done now on this final Waikaremoana development, and the plant is already on order, for at this time, when war means inevitable delay in manufacture, the Government was fortunate in obtaining turbines, generators and transformers already partly manufactured. They were ordered well before the outbreak of war in the Pacific for a Netherlands East Indies hydro station, in Sumatra, but when the Japanese overran the Indies they were left on the manufacturers' hands. The generating plant is of suitable capacity and the turbines have been designed for almost exactly the same head as for the final Waikaremoana development. The two generators and transformers are being completed at the works of Metropolitan Vickers, Ltd., ManChester, and the turbines by Boving and Co., London.

It is hoped that they will be in operation in about two years. That is good power news for the future. For the present all-round economy is the only answer to winter shortage.