The Taranaki Herald. DAILY EVENING TUESDAY, MARCH 4, 1919. HYDRO-ELECTRIC SCHEMES.

Taranaki Herald, Volume LXVII, Issue 16379, 4 March 1919, Page 2

The Taranaki Herald. DAILY EVENING TUESDAY, MARCH 4, 1919. HYDRO-ELECTRIC SCHEMES.

At a public meeting in Palmerston North last week Mr. E. Parry, Government Electrical Engineer, gave some particulars of the Mangahao hydro-electric scheme, which go to show that Taranaki will be wise to provide its own scheme and also that the New Plymouth ratepayers were right in authorising the Borough Council to proceed with Mr. Blair Mason’s scheme for further development of the Waiwakaiho as a source of hydro-electric power. According to Mr. Parry the Mangahao will provide 24,000 horse-power. There is not sufficient water in the river to provide this power in all seasons, but it is proposed to build dams which will hold up a reserve of about 190 million cubic feet of water. But under the most favourable circumstances it will be three or four years before the supply of power is available for general distribution. Mr. Parry added that nobody within a hundred miles raduis of Mangahao need be afraid that they will not receive a supply when the scheme is fully developed. As Stratford is about a hundred miles-in a straight line from Shannon (more like 150 miles by the route the power cable would follow) it would seem in the highest degree unlikely that the Mangahao scheme, will be able to supply any part of North or Central Taranaki. In any case it must be three or four years at least, and possibly five or six, before any power from there is available for distribution. The utmost capacity of the scheme will be 24,000 horse-power,- or sufficient to give 240,000 people one-tenth of a horse-power per unit. This is about the capacity of the scheme now in operation for the town of New Plymouth alone, and as the population of the Wellington provincial district will by the time the Mangahao scheme is completed be well over a quarter of a million it will be seen that there will be no power from there to be spared for Taranaki. The Arapuni (Waikato) scheme is estimated to* give 96,000 horse-power, but at present we have no information as to when it would be possible to have it completed. The Mangahao is to be undertaken first, so that it will be eight or ten years at least before Arapuni can be looked to for a supply, and then Auckland will expect first cut—and a very big one —at the power available. If Taranaki chooses to take its power, as far as it will go, from the New Plymouth Borough Council, and the Waiwakaiho scheme is developed to its full capacity of 6300 horse-power (Mr. Blair Mason’s estimate), there should be plenty of power available here long before it can be ob-

tained from outside. As to the financial side of the local proposition, in Mr. Parry’s report of October 26, 1918, on the North Island scheme, he said that it would require at least a million tons of coal per annum to provide the 160,000 horse-power estimated to be provided by the Mangahao, Waikaremoana, and Arapuni schemes at a cost of £7,303,042. This is about six tons of coal per horse-power. On the same basis it would take six times 6300 tons of coal per annum—37,Boo tons—to provide the power estimated to be obtained' from the Waiwakaiho. Assuming that the coal cost 30s per ton, which is much less than the present cost, there would be a saving of £56,700 a year. The capital cost of Mr. Parry’s North Island scheme is estimated at £45 per horse-power, including substations and distribution lines. Supposing Mr. Blair Mason’s scheme cost £SO per horse-power, that would involve a capital expenditure, including transmission lines and generation stations, of approximately £315,000. The £56,700 a year saved on coal required to provide the same power would liquidate the whole cost in six years. It will thus be seen that the undertaking is thoroughly sound financially, while the indirect benefit to the country to be derived from the possession of an abundance of cheap power is incalculable.