NEW POWER STATION

Evening Star, Issue 22891, 24 February 1938, Page 3

NEW POWER STATION

SUPPLEMENT TO COLERIDGEWAIPORI SUPPLY [Per United Press Association.] WELLINGTON, February 23. Provision for the erection in a few years of'a hydro-electric station capable of developing 17,000 kw, equal to half the output of Lake Coleridge, has been made by the Public Works Department. The site of the projected station is on the southern bank of the Rakaia River, directly north of Methyen, where tne diversion race supplying water for irrigation purposes to the Ashburton-Lyndhurst and Hinds-May-field areas will dip down into Rakaia after a 40-mile run over down country and plains. When completed—and no date for a start will be fixed for a long time yet—the new station will he an important unit in the Jinks of the electricity generating chain now connecting Lake Coleridge, Waitaki, and Waipori. Its value will be that a full head of water, 1,000 cusecs, will be available for turning the turbine in winter time. No water wiU then require to be diverted into the irrigation races. A factor of still greater influence in the decision was that in the winter months the flows of water to the Waitaki and Lake Coleridge stations are low, both the present main stations depending for supplies on glacier sources. The site lends itself naturally to the purposes of a power station, there being a fall of 350 ft from the terrace where the diversion race will end to the selected location of the station.