LARGE POWER CONTRACTS LET.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 18015, 27 November 1926, Page 1

LARGE POWER CONTRACTS LET.

GOVERNMENT ACCEPTS TENDERS OF’ £130,000. WAIKAREMOANA SCHEME WILL AID MANGAHAO. (Special to the “Star.”) WELLINGTON, November 26 Tenders aggregating over £130,000 have been accepted by the Government for the supply of the principal machinery to complete the first section of the main hydro electric scheme utilising water from Lake Waikarcmoana. The successful contractors, in every case supplying British goods, are:— Two steel pipe lines—Dunedin Engineering and Steel Co., £5869. Two generators Metropolitan Vickers Electric Co., £29,242. Turbines—Armstrong and Whitworth and Co., London, £2I,GS6. Indoor control gear with switch gear—Cory, Wright and Salmon, on behalf of the English Electric Co., £5424. Transformers, 110,000 volt—Metropolitan Vickers Co., £15,791. The Scheme Described. The demand for hydro-electric power from Mangahao has so greatly exceeded expectations that one board in Wellington suburbs has to raise an additional £150.000 for the further reticulation. All the boards supplied from Mangahao are well ahead of their guarantees. Consequently Waikaremoana will be required to take a good load when the first, section of the scheme is completed. The work is being done under the same system as Mangahao,

the Public Works Department doing all the heavy construction, securing its pipe line ancl machinery by contract.

The tenders just accepted comprise the largest portions of the equipment, but a further series of tenders for machinery not requiring so long a time for construction will be called for in January. The Waikaremoana has an ultimate capacity of 120.000 kilowatts, but the scheme for which machinery has been purchased will develop the first section of 40.000 kilowatts. It comprises two generators of 20,000 kilowatts driven direct from the Francis type turbines, the alternator running at 428 revolutions per minute. A feature of the power house, which work the Department is constructing, is that only a limited amount of switch gear will be housed in the station, the balance of the transformers and the high tension gear being of the outdoor type to he erected on a site adjacent to the powerhouse. The powerhouse is to be placed on the Whakaramarino Tint, 10<0 feet below the level of the lake and the fall utilised will be that fropi Kaitawa bake. Its flow will be augmented by diverting water from a river, the supply to be taken in along an open cut ancl a tunnel 030 feet in length to a surge chamber at the head of a double line of steel pipes about six feet in diameter and having a fall of 670 feet to the powerhouse. In anticipation of future demand, power lines have been surveyed to connect with Mangahao power at Napier, as this system will reach that point in January. Tenders are now being called for the tmvers required on the Waikaremoana-Xapicr power line. The northward line is- also planned and a substation for the Gisborne supply area will be erected near Patutahi.