ELECTRIC POWER STATION

Press, Volume LXXIV, Issue 22335, 24 February 1938, Page 8

ELECTRIC POWER STATION

SITE CHOSEN NEAR METHVEN TO SUPPLEMENT EXISTING SUPPLIES WATER FROM RANGITATA IRRIGATION DIVERSION Provision for the erection, in a few years, of a hydro-electric station, capable of developing 17.000 k.w.—equal to half the output from Lake Coleridge—has been made by the Public Works Department. The site of the projected station is on the southern bank of the Rakaia river, directly north of Methven, where the diversion race, supplying water for irrigation purposes to the Ashburton-Lyndhurst and HindsMayfield areas, will dip down into the Rakaia after a 40-mile run over the down country and plains. When its is completed—and no date for the start of construction will be fixed for a long time yet—the new station will be an important unit in the links of the electricity generating chain now connecting Lake Coleridge, Waitaki, and Waipori. Its value will be that a full head of water, a volume of 1000 cusecs, will be available for turning the turbine in winter time. No water will then require to be diverted into the irrigation races. A factor of still greater influence in the decision to make tentative plans for the Rakaia generating plant was that in the winter months the flows of water to the Waitaki and Lake Coleridge stations are low, both the present main stations depending for their supplies from glacier sources. *A Natural Fall The site lends itself naturally to the purposes of a power station, there being a fall of 350 feet from the terrace where the diversion race will end to the selected location of the station. As the irrigation scheme will not be completed for more than two years, no plans for the hydro-elec-tric plant have been prepared, but the development of the station has now become an integral part of the major irrigation scheme. Under the original surveys for irrigation, proposals were made for the erection of a small hydro-elec-tricity station on the banks of the Rangitata, at the end of the terraces along which the race will run before turning north to the Gawlor Downs. A bigger scheme on the Rakaia then attracted the attention of the engineers, who revised the plans to allow of a bigger diversion canal to carry 1000 cusecs, compared with the original 800 cusecs.