POWER AT MANAPOURI

Rotorua Morning Post, Issue 5328, 14 February 1947, Page 4

POWER AT MANAPOURI

i TJEFERENCE to the proposal j that hydro-electric power ■ should be conveyed by submarine cable from Norway to Scotland made in this column on Wednesday recalls the fact that a privately-promoted scheme for hydro development in the areas of Lakes Manapouri and Te Anau and Doubtful and George Sounds will be heard of again when Parliament meets. The company proposes to petition the House for a renewal of the licence it formerly held and which, it considers, would enable the development of a huge eleetro-chemical and. electrometallurgical industry- in the Sounds area.

The case for the company will ,j be presented by the Member for Invercargill, Mr. J. R. Hanan, who says the intention was originally to construct a tunnel j from Manapouri to Deep Cove, j in Doubtful Sound, almost seven j miles long. If the whole of the j. water from the Manapouri — Te i Anau system, including the | water of the Mararoa River, was j | utilised by damming the Waiau j below the Mararoa, the power ! available would be more than i twice as much as the Boulder ; Dam plant in the United States and in excess of that of the ] great Russian power project on I the Dnieper. j In the past, two main diffi- I culties had stood in the way of I development — the distance from j the centres- of industry involving ! high costs in transmission for a j relatively limited demand and j the fact that the power available | wras so vast that it could not be j found for many years to come. ! Times had changed, however. t I The rate of annual increase in j j % l ■ the consumption of electricity in J recent years had far exceeded anyone's expectations. 1 To make the scheme practicai ! and economic Mr. Hanan con- I siders that i.t will have to be ! attempted on a relatively big J scale and that presupposed the | selling of a considerable amoiint of power on a 24-hour basis, preferably at the source of generation such as that for elec-trical-chemical purposes as proposed' by Hydro-Electric Concessions, Ltd., in the manufacture of nitrate. "The full development of the schelne outlined, it is stated, by the utilisation of power at its soqrce for continuous working, ^ would make power available for geneital purposes for the South Island at a cost J:o the consumer which might be the lowest in the world. Some of the methods by which this supply of electricity could be put to industrial use are: — Jhe manufacture of nitrate by the Harver process. The economy of . Egypt depends largely upon imports bf nitrate supplied by Norway, which manufaetures under I this process. 8 The extraction of magnesium 1 from sea water. I The ' manufacture of carbide" I from which is obtained aeetylene, the basis of the new plastic- industries. In the Colorado River was constructed the Boulder Dam. The Colorado River flows at the rate of 15,000 cubic feet a second; the flow of.Um upper Waiau only is 15,000 cubic feet a second. The effective head of water in the Colorado scheme is 475 feet; the effective head of the George Sound scheme is 650 feet. The Boulder Dam gener- ■ ates 820,000 horse-power; the George Sound scheme would generate 1,150,000 hors^-power. v %