HARNESSING THE TIDES

Dominion, Volume 14, Issue 73, 20 December 1920, Page 4

HARNESSING THE TIDES

IS SjCHEJIE PRACTICABLE? The chairman of the Australian Electricity Commission (Lieut.-Gleneral Sir John Monash) considers that the.capital cost of liarn?ssing\ the titles to generate electric power would bp- greater than the value of the clcctricity. producod. A cablo message published)recently stated that thjo engineering department of the Ministry fof Transport had. published details of tho world's greatest waterpower scheme, in whicli the tide of. the river Severn, would 1m utilised to pro--duce as estimated total of over 5(K1,Q00 clectrical horse-power per ten-hour day." "The question of harnessing ih'o tides," Sir John Monasli said to a representative of the "Argus," "is one of the oldest of engineering problems, and has besn investigated many times by eminent people. Hay years ago the conclusion appears to .have bven readied that, because electric power had been generated by waterfalls, the harnessing' of the tides for Iht- samo purpose was possible. When tho details of the work have been gono into, however, it has been found that the capital cost of such a schema would bo so enormous that it overshadowed the amount of power that would 'bo produced. Although J do uur know anything about the Severn scheme, a proposition of this nation has hce.n widely discussed -every few years, and in more than one caso Irns proved to bo « hoax. I would not like to go so far us to- say that the ,Sevorn schemo is * hoax, "but I would not be surprised to find that it is one. In -any case; howover, if such a schcnie is justified in

Great liritain, where the tido runs to something like 40ft,, it is a very different, proposition from anything of its kind in Australia, wlftre tho tides are moderate. running as a general rule up to about 10ft. The amount of pnwor that, can be secured from this 'hend' is insignificant, and unless huge quantities of water can bo harnessed any scheme for generating elcctric power is placed entirely 'out of court' in comparison with a waterfall of a considerable height."