GIANT POWER.

Evening Star, Issue 19197, 13 March 1926, Page 6

GIANT POWER.

So great was the interest aroused by Mr Stanley Baldwin’s outline of the Government’s electricity scheme in January last that the newspapers wore unanimous in stating that all of a sudden the country had become alive to the problem of power. His scheme is in one sense a national one, but that term is not to apply to ownership. It is to have national scope, and involves a considerable amount of national control. Broadly speaking, the parties to the scheme will bo throe—the manufacturer of current, tho middleman, and the retailer. The middleman is to bo a central board created by Parliament. It will buy current in bulk from those who generate the electricity, transmit the current over its own main transmission lines, and sell it to local distributors. But unlike most middlemen this central board will not bo out to make profits. Any surplus it may show over capital charges and working costs is to be divided among its customers, the municipal and other undertakings buying supplies from it, and presumably at least a part of that will bo eventually passed on to the consumers in tho form of lower rates per unit. This central board is to bo armed with extensive powers, enabling it to compel all interests to come into line. In the first placo it will have authority to close down tho great bulk of the existing electric power generating stations. There are 534 of them at present; it is proposed to reduce them to sixty. The advantages of a uniform electricity supply for the whole country, furnished cheaply from a few great generating stations, are obvious. And of those advantages the consumer is not to be deprived of bis share, as the generating authorities are to work on the principle of the limitation of profits. These, doubtless, will be regulated by the central board. Some such regulation is urgently needed. What between wasteful production and unblushing profiteering, the charges paid by some British consumers have been staggering, while those drawing supplies from better managed sources have been to the former a cause of great envy.

According to Mr Baldwin’s figures, the working cost per unit varied in different generating stations from ,44d to lid, and the amount of coal used to generate one unit varied from 1.31 b to over 101 b. Tho editor of the ‘ Electrician ’ states that tha coal consumed each year in generating current in public stations in Britain is eight million tons, an average of 2.531 b per unit, and ho is convinced that this average can ho greatly reduced by confining generation, as proposed, to a small number of largo and highly efficient plants. Tho cost of generation will he very largely reduced. An offset against that will be tho capital cost of tho trunk transmission lines and standardisation of the frequency of the current (this latter being estimated at £10,000,000). Nevertheless, experts are convinced that the current -will be made available at cheaper rates than are now charged by the more efficient of the concerns, while the construction of tho trunk lines will open up the country for tho supply of districts not yet tapped. This making of current available ' far more widely and at cheaper rates should lead to a tremendous increase in consumption. In this the coal mines should find more than a recompense for the lowered coal consumption per unit generated, which is one of tho reasons for the national scheme. Otherwise their present troubles would be added to instead of lessened.

The supply of electricity to farms and villages has been almost neglected in Britain, and farming will receive its. duo share of attention in the new scheme. Giving to the linking of cities by connecting lines of supply, electricity should at least be available in those parts of the country through which the lines pass. Conditions have changed so much since pre-war days that in many respects farming is a new business. The recognised line of action is to increase the output of each farm per acre and per man. One of the factors that would very materially assist in that is the application of electricity. To those who have investigated the matter it is difficult to know how the farmer of the future could possibly get along without its aid. In the words of the editor of the ‘ Electrician ’: “ What the public should realise is that this is a courageous, even a heroic, attempt to place this island in a position to support its present immense population and to secure its share of the world’s trade by providing an electricity supply on national lines.”