No Grey Coal For Generator

Press, Volume CVIII, Issue 31680, 16 May 1968, Page 26

No Grey Coal For Generator

fFrom Our Own Reporter) GREYMOUTH, May 15. For some very sound reasons, the use of Grey Valley coal in the coal-fired power station at New Plymouth was impracticable, the Minister of Mines (Mr Shand) said in a letter to the Grey County Council. The chairman of the council (Mr D. J. Ryall) said Mr Shand's letter was disappointing. Mr Shand said that coal had to be won and transported at the lowest possible cost to make a coal-fired power station an economic proposition. This could be achieved only by planning for the bulk handling of the coal on a major scale. Methods of coal transport by land and sea had not been decided, but the information so far available to the interdepartmental committee studying tfie problem indicated that an aerial ropeway all the way from Stockton to the bunkers on the Westport waterfront would be cheaper than any other means. “From the bunkers the coal will be discharged by gravity direct into the vessels at the rate of about 2000 tons an hour. No means are planned for loading the bunkers from railway waggons,” he said. “If Grey Valley coal were to be used it would have to be railed to Greymouth and shipped to New Plymouth along with the Buller coal.

in which case special provision would be needed to transfer from the railway waggons to the bunkers at Westport and the overall cost a ton would be well over $l7. “Present indications are that Buller coal can be delivered at very little more than half this figure,” Mr Shand said. “The additional cost of using 100,000 tons of Grey Valley coal could approach $1 million a year. “Whereas in the Buller fields we are planning a major operation to recover about a million tons of coal a year (mostly opencast), in the Grey Valley we would be merely maintaing the scale of operations of recent years, with little prospect of reducing the cost a ton,” Mr Shand said.