Cuts today depend on weather

Press, Volume CXIV, Issue 33462, 18 February 1974, Page 1

Cuts today depend on weather

Cool weather forced most Christchurch power supply authorities to impose water-heating cuts during the week-end.

The possibility of further cuts today would depend on the weather, said the general manager of the Municipal Electricity Department (Mr J. P. Shelley) last evening.

In the M.E.D. area, an eight-hour cut in waterheating was made yesterday from 11 a.m. Five-hour cuts were made by the Heathcote County and the Central Canterbury Electric Power Board. The water-heating cuts were a warning of how difficult the power situation would be unless there was a determined effort to con- , serve power, said the Minister of Electricity (Mr McGuigan).

Storage lakes were at a particularly low level and more rain was badly needed in the catchment areas, he said. Tile levels of Lake Waikaremoana and Lake Taupo were continuing to fall. ’ Mr McGuigan said that he would receive reports today of how beneficial the recent rain had been in the North Island.

The oil-fired generators at Marsden Point, idle since early December, have been brought back into service to feed the national grid, said Mr McGuigan. The generators would be a help to the North Island storage lakes. A week’s output of electricity from Marsden Point was equal to three inches of water in Lake Taupo, he said.

More than an inch of rain in the last two days had improved the levels of South Island hydro-electric lakes, a spokesman for the Electricity Department said yesterday, reports the Press Association.

He said the levels of North Island lakes had not improved.