First Tower Up For Cook Strait Power

Press, Volume CI, Issue 29832, 26 May 1962, Page 10

First Tower Up For Cook Strait Power

On the plains near Mayfield, a mile north of the Rangitata river, the New Zealand Electricity Department is raising the first towers to carry power - transmission lines from Benmore hydro to the Fighting Bay terminal of the Cook Strait cable.

A gang of seven men, including two Thais who, under the Colombo Plan, are being trained as line-construction foremen, finished the first 100 ft tower on Thursday. Experienced gangs, working on contract, will put up each tower in seven to eight hours.

For 340 miles about 1600 steel pylons will be spaced about 18 chains apart. More gangs will be employed soon, but progress with the job will depend on the arrival of steel sections which are being imported from Italy. Each tower arrives in more than 200 pieces, which are sorted at the Electricity Department’s Islington yard into giant kit-sets. Advance parties have now dug 150 sets of holes to take the legs of the towers at Mayfield, Methven, Oxford, and Culverden. Southern reaches of the line will be completed later. Stringing of the two pairs of aluminium and steel cables should begin at the end of the year, and these conductors will be ready for testing early in December, 1964. The lines will be able to carry 600,000 kilowatts of direct current, enough to power 600,000 one-bar heaters and more than the capacity output of the Benmore hydro scheme. They could’’ also carry power from the projected Aviemore scheme, a

few miles downstream on the Waitaki.

The lines will hang from bars 70ft above the ground. Above them on the top of the towers will be the lightning earth wires. The Thai members of the first tower-erecting gang are Mr Pravit Pusthep and Mr Prasert Tongthunchard. They are preparing for work on a 400-mile power-transmission line through the swamps and jungles of Thailand. The total cost of the land line to the Strait is estimated at £2m. The 1400 miles of 83strand conductor will account for about £1,250.000 of this.