Electricity Supply.

Press, Volume LXVI, Issue 20025, 5 September 1930, Page 10

Electricity Supply.

The emphatic warning issued by the District Electrical Engineer yesterday means in effect that a serious crisis has arrived for City power-users, and that anxiety will not disappear until the Waitaki works come into operation two years henee, or later. There is no adequate stand-by or emergency or supplementary generating station anywhere in the Coleridge supply area, so that a serious situation will develop as often as anything happens to interrupt or limit the full- productive power of the lake. Nor is it possible to say that the policy ctf the Public Works Department has shown a very intelligent appreciation of this fact. It has steadfastly opposed the Christchnrch Gitjr Council's Waimakariri scheme,

though the Coleridge pUnv, which was originally designed for a total capacity of 12,000 kilowatts, could only be enlarged and extended by the installation of machinery in excess of the waterpower available. The District Electrical Engineer does not mention exactly what the Coleridge works are capable of producing with the restricted water supply, but if it becomes necessary to shut off more or less permanently one or more of the generators the reduction will be very substantial. For the year ending March 31st last the Christchurch City took as its maximum load approximately one-third of the capacity output of the plant, and the demand in the City and suburbs is growing. The remaining two-thirds went to different Power Boards throughout the country and to the towns of Ashburton, Timaru, and Oamaru, while a large supply of Coleridge current is being used by the Department itself in the construction works at Waitaki. The Lake Coleridge station was established and developed primarily for the benefit of Christchurch, and the people of the City are entitled to an assurance, before their supply is rationed, that the maximum economies are being observed in the use of Coleridge current elsewhere. The Public Works Department has never made a sufficient allowance for growth in the demand for current, and has always resisted the idea that there might be room both for the proposed Waimakariri station and for Coleridge as well. The result now is that Coleridge has been unwisely overdeveloped, and the Waitaki scheme as. unwisely delayed, while the people of Canterbury and of North Otago are suffering for the Department's shortness of vision. There is a prospect of a very lean and difficult period until the Waitaki works begin to functionperhaps in 1932, and perhaps, as the General Manager of the Municipal Electricity Department believes, much later —and the anxiety of a rationed supply in the meantime would bs converted into the tragedy of a total failure if any further disaster befell the Coleridge station. There is indeed no guarantee that when the Waitaki station does begin to function the Department will have established a proper margin of safety.