POWER CUTS MAY BE ENFORCED IN GREY DISTRICT

Greymouth Evening Star, 1 April 1950, Page 4

POWER CUTS MAY BE ENFORCED IN GREY DISTRICT

If consumers do not make a voluntary effort to reduce power consumption in the Grey district it is probable - that power cuts will have to be enforced, said Mr S. W. J. Trotter, engineer to the Grey Power Board, this morning. When it was announced that measures would have to be taken throughout New Zealand to conserve power supplies, an appeal was made by the Grey Power Board for consumers to co-operate by making voluntary cuts. A check will be taken at the beginning of next week to ascertain whether there has been any noticeable saving and, if not, it is probable that consideration will be given to enforcing cuts.

Drastic Power Cuts Threatened In South Island

CHRISTCHURCH, This Day (P.A.) —Unless consumers co-operated by saving power, drastic cuts were inevitable, said the district engineer of the State Hydro-Electric Department (Mr W. H. Gregory) this morning. He quoted figures of power consumption in the South Island this week to show that up to 6.2 per cent more power than the allocation had been used. “This cannot go on,” he stated. “I am not an alarmist when I say that the position generally is extremely serious.”

Drawing On Storage He said that 800,000 units had been drawn out of storage yesterday. Although consumers were supposed to keep their power demands down to' the level for the corresponding week of last year the peak demand in the main South Island system yesterday was 150,016 kilowatts, compared with a peak load of 146,230 kilowatts on the corresponding day in 1949. “At the moment we are eight or nine weeks ahead of the estimated draw-off in the storage rivers. The feeding lakes are lower than they would normally be if we had had a ‘freeze-up.’ If we had a ‘freeze-up’ now I don’t know what would happen. The results would, to say the least, be extremely serious,” he said.

Rivers Very Low Mr Gregory said that the flow in the Harper river into Lake Coleridge today was the lowest- ever recorded in the department’s records, which went back about 40 years. To counter this weak flow, additional water was being drawn from the already depleted storage at Lake Pukaki. The department was doing its best 'in a very ticklish situation, but it must have the co-operation of consumers if heavier restrictions were not to be imposed.