SUPPLY OF RURAL AREAS

Evening Star, Issue 19633, 12 August 1927, Page 2

SUPPLY OF RURAL AREAS

VALUE TO FARMERS In an address to members of a farmers’ club at the Institution of Mechanical Engineers, London, recently, Dr Alfred Ekstrom discussed the adaptability of rural electrification to the United Kingdom. Ho said it was agreed that agriculture was working under very difficult conditions. Tbo only effective remedy lay, in tho first place, in the mechanising of agriculture and in an increased use of electricity for rural purposes, thus achieving a reduction in the farmer’s cost of production. The introduction of electricity also into the homo and its employment in the work of everyday life would certainly bo ono of tbo most beneficial tasks of power supply concerns in tlio immediate future. The electrification of country districts, naturally, did hot mean that every cottage could be electrified. Tho condition for this electrification was a certain density of population and a certain degree of economic prosperity, it was therefore necessary to differentiate between economically clcctrifiable and economically nou-elcc-tritiablc country districts. In solitary, widely-scattered small farms one could hardly think of changing tho paraffin lamp for electric light or of providing tho insignificant power requirements with any kind of mechanical motive power. If tho farm was fairly large, or the requirements of energy for other reasons appreciable, it would pay to nso internal combustion engines for the power, or even on a farm or small factory to. produce electricity for light and motive power. If several such consumers of energy were situated close to one another a, centralisation of the power production and tlie erection of a distribution not was expedient. In this case, too, all neighboring small consumers could, as n rule, have access to electricity. In spite of small consumption the extra expense for supplying also the energy requirements of the small consumer was so low that electricity was cheaper than the paraffin lamp and the internal combustion engine.