The Press TUESDAY, APRIL 26, 1955. Quota Rationing Of Power

Press, Volume XCI, Issue 27642, 26 April 1955, Page 12

The Press TUESDAY, APRIL 26, 1955. Quota Rationing Of Power

’ The individual quota system of power rationing announced by the 1 Christchurch City Council at its meeting on Friday is a clumsy farce. The council and its electricity committee know that it takes two to four months to introduce an individual quota system and to enforce it. They know that, with consumption running—in this fine, mild weather—ls or 17 per cent, above the allocation, the need to save power is imperative and immediate. Yet they postpone for more than five weeks the operation of the measures which they have adopted, officially, to save power; and the chairman of the electricity committee damns the scheme in advance by declaring that he has not much confidence in its bringing results and by shrugging off responsibility for it as something “recommended” to the council by the general manager of the State Hydro-electric Department. The scheme certainly was recommended to South Island supply authorities by Mr Davenport; and considerable experience in the North Island suggests that no other method of rationing power in time of shortage is as effective or as equitable to all consumers. The system is not one for a sudden emergency but for a foreseeable and protracted shortage —exactly the kind of shortage that has been expected in the South Island this winter. It needs to be introduced in good time, so that consumers become accustomed to the idea of watching their meters and regulating their use of electrical appliances accordingly, so that successive meter readings can be studied by the supply authority, so that adjustments can be made in cases of hardship, and so that extravagant users of power can be disciplined—all this before, not after, the real crisis of the shortage has been reached. It is doubtful whether the Municipal Electricity Department will have a quota scheme, introduced on June 1, in fully effective working order by the end of October, by which time, it may be hoped, the need for tight restrictions will have passed. An individual quota system will not automatically “bring results” any more surely than compulsory restrictions of the kind now in force. Both have to be firmly policed. It is obvious that the present day-time restrictions on the use of waterheaters, which should be sufficient to keep Christchurch within its quota, are being defied; and there is no evidence that any serious effort is being made to enforce them. Unless the City Council is prepared to enforce the quota rationing system vigorously and comprehensively it would be wiser to abandon the idea of individual quotas and to make the necessary savings on behalf of the community by pulling the switches at the substations. That, seemingly, is the method preferred by the chairman of the council’s electricity committee; for there is no other alternative. But it will be a pity if the community should be. denied a more intelligent regimen of power-saving either because of the irresponsibility of some consumers or the dilatoriness of the supply authority.