Maraetai Generators For Matahina Station

Press, Volume C, Issue 29624, 21 September 1961, Page 7

Maraetai Generators For Matahina Station

“The Press" Special Service

AUCKLAND, Sept 20. The Matahina power station, in the Bay of Plenty, will not have to be redesigned to take the generating plant originally destined for the Maraetai No. 2 station, now abandoned indefinitely. The general manager of the New Zealand Electricity Department (Mr A. E. Davenport) said the machines were identical to those planned for Matahina. He emphasised that the transfer of the plant and the last week to suspend work at Maraetai No. 2 did not entail an increase in either the planned output of Matahina or in the rate at which it would be built. The two 50,000-horsepower hydraulic turbines and two 36-kilowatt generators, the first of seven sets planned for Maraetai No. 2, would yield exactly the power which it was originally proposed that Matahina should provide. The Government decision of mid-June to slow down work at Matahina still virtually stands. i Until June, the target date for commissioning was April, 1965. Since the slow-down order, the Electricity Depart-

ment has been working to a target date of April, 1967. Now the Power Planning Committee confirms that the project should not be delayed beyond this date. It suggests that work might even be speeded up. Worth £750,000, the-tur-bines (from the Dominion Engineering Company, Ltd., of Canada) and the generators (from the English Electric Company, Ltd., of Britain) will still be delivered as first planned for installation at Maraetai by June, 1963.

But for two years, until they can be installed at Matahina, they will be stored near Auckland. Plant for the original Maraetai station was similarly stored at Auckland for several years after the Second World War.

The Electricity Department will soon begin negotiating with the suppliers of the machines ordered in February of this year for Matahina. ’

With some alterations, these will probably go to the 60,000 - kilowatt station planned for completion in July. 1968, at Kopuriki, upstream from Matahina on the Rangitaiki river. Mr Davenport said that apparent deficiencies in power supply from 1963-65, if they were dry years, could be met with power generated by water drawn from storage. “We don’t work on an absolute margin, except that there will be one for a while after the installation of the Cook Strait cable,” he said. Mr Davenport said tenders for the supply of pylons for 360 miles of overhead transmission lines for the cable scheme had been let to an Italian firm.

The pylons, to be supplied early next year, would be erected by the Electricity Department. They would link the Benmore generating station in the South Island and the Haywards sub-station, north of Wellington, with the cable.