ELECTRICITY DEVELOPMENT

Evening Star, Issue 19893, 15 June 1928, Page 2

ELECTRICITY DEVELOPMENT

In a recent address Mr Archibald Page (chief engineer of the British Central Electricity Board and president of tho Institution of Electrical Engineers) stated that electricity development depended largely upon its greater use, and that its greater use depended upon its cheapness. He, however, was going to claim that electricity was a cheap commodity to-day, and that one of tho most extraordinary mysteries connected with it was the misconception as to its price. In spite of the complaints of so-called high prices, it was extraordinary what development had taken place. Taking sixty-three authorities, representing more than half the total consumption in the country, he found that in 1923 the consumption was 1,888,000,000 kwh, whilst to-day it was 3,000,000,000, an increase of 61 per cent. Similarly, the number of consumers had risen in that period from 567,000 to 924,000, an increase of 72 per cent., and, in spite ot the complaints as to price, electricity had become so extraordinarily cheap that the average price was to-day 1.62 d per kwh for these undertakings. Before the war the average price was 1.77 d, so that to-day the electricity industry was supplying current throughout the country at uu.lcr pre war rates. No other industry in the country could make such a claim, and the reduction had been brought about not because there had been any reduction in the price of raw material nor in labour—because labour had gone up anything from 50 to 100 per cent., and coal had increased by 100 per cent.— but because the industry had taken advantage of every improvement available, and had not bee afraid to scrap plant which was not as efficient as it might bo. It was for that reason that ho desired to combat the assertion that the cost of electricity was unduly high, taking the country ns a, whole. Tho trouble was that the public to be educated to the fact that electrical units did not cost tho same in one part of the country as in another, and that they could not be treated as ordinary merchandise.