HYDRO-ELECTRIC POWER.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LIX, Issue 18172, 18 August 1922, Page 7

HYDRO-ELECTRIC POWER.

AMERICAN DEVELOPMENT.

NEW ZEALANDER'S VISIT. [FROM OUR OWN CORRESPONDENT.] LONDON. July 7. While travelling in Canada and the United States Mr. Herbert Hall, of Timaru, devoted some time to making inquiries into the development of hydraelectricity.

Although industrial development is temporarily at a standstill in the United States, the development of water-power is going on at an enormous rate. The type of machinery is tending to become] larger and larger. Whereas in the early days the plants erected possessed 10,000 to 15,000 h.p. engines, their power is now being increased from 50,000 to 75,000. The whole tendency is to change over from coal to the utilisation,of hydroelectricity in any district where water is available.

While in Canada Mr. Hall had the opportunity of examining many plants, and he was. particularly interested in that of the Ontario Power Commission, who are installing a plant on the Chippawa River, near the lake, to develop half a million h.p.,. and this is connected with the general system for supplying all classes of consumers. The Ontario Government is prepared to subsidise to the extent of 50 per cent, the capital cost of distribution lines for farmers, and is making proposals to supply the farmers at.a flat rate per year of from £10 to £25, to include the driving of all their small agricultural plant and their plant for household cooking.

Hitherto there has been insufficient power to supply the usual run of agricultural farms, but this subject is now receiving a great deal of expert attention alike in the United States and in Canada, and is in a very much more highly developed state than it is in New Zealand. In British Columbia and Ontario he saw the successful working of household cookery by this medium, the cost for an average family at the end of a year working out at about £10.

Turing his stay in the Niagara zone Mr. Hall examined most of the vast power plants, and he mentions as an interesting point that the income from the sale of electricity in the province of Ontario al>me is £2,000,000, From the point of view of the utilisation of waterpower, Canada provides a great object lesson to New Zealand. Most of the plants he 6aw in Canada were more expensive to instal than they would be in New Zealand, because in the latter country t'he conditions for installation are relatively far more simple and therefore would be less costly.