POWER SUPPLY FOR BOROUGH

Timaru Herald, Volume CXXXVII, Issue 19671, 13 December 1933, Page 9

POWER SUPPLY FOR BOROUGH

AGREEMENT NOT YET SIGNED . MATTERS IN DISPUTE The proposed agreement between the : South Canterbury Power Board and i the Timaru Borough Council for the ! supply of electrical energy to the ! borough has not yet been signed by the Council, one point only being in | dispute. I The point is in regard to the maxi- ; mum demand, and in this connection I the Finance Committee of the Board, iat the request of Mr H. J. Mathers. I brought down a special report in regard i to synchronisation of maximum demands. Maximum Demand. The report stated that the maximum demand was recorded by meters at the Grant’s Hill Sub-station and these showed the amount of current drawn by the Board for retail and for bulk supply separately. The method of recording was that from a base horizontal line, representing the perigee, there rose vertical lines, the highest of which represented the apogee. The perigee would occur when Coleridge supply was cut off and all lines were dead, and the apogee at the moment when the greatest amount of current was drawn from Coleridge through the sub-station by the Board. The method of charge was for the highest average demand made during that half hour in the period when the apogee was reached, and approximately sustained. A vertical line was drawn every five minutes on the chart by the recorder and six of these vertical lines represented half an hour of supply. The group of six whose average height was greater than the average height of any other group of six during the period, was taken as what was termed the “maximum demand” and the Board was charged for current throughout the period upon that highest group of six vertical recorded lines. These charts were of interest to the staff as enabling them to so handle the demand as to keep as low as possible the apogee for any half hour, and so ! lessen the amount of money to be paid | by the Board. The synchronisation of | the retail maximum demand with that ! of the bulk supply demand was a matI ter of interest also, as it affected the j interrelations of the retail and bulk j supplies. Charts showing the bulk supply demand were supplied to the Timaru Borough electrical staff and charts showing the supply demand for the retail in addition were supplied to the staff of the Board, and in the opinion j of the committee, this was all that was i necessary or desirable. Matters At Issue. Mr G. Dash said that there were two j matters at issue between the Board j and the Council. The first was in i regard to the agreement, which had been signed by the Board, but not by j the Council. The Council had a j different method of charging, and the j Board held that the words the Council desired to insert made it difficult to agree to. The speaker then quoted from the committee’s special report on maximum demand to illustrate the Board’s method of charging. Mr Dash said that the second point was in regard to the line which the Council had joining the Board’s lines at Grant’s Hill. The committee desired the Board to confirm the charge to the Council of £26 5s per annum, being 7 per cent, depreciation and maintenance on £375. which was half the cost of the transmission line from the sub-station to the Timaru Borough terminal pole. The chairman (Mr J. Kennedy) explained that the Borough had a line to the sub-station before the Board came into being, and the Council had maintained the line ever since, though it ran through the Board’s area. The action of the committee was endorsed.