Karioi dam may be last big hydro scheme

Ruapehu Bulletin, Volume 9, Issue 429, 24 March 1992, Page 4

Karioi dam may be last big hydro scheme

The proposed KarioiWhangaehu power scheme may be the biggest and the last major hydro power station built in New Zealand for at least 25 years. King Country Energy chief engineer Colin Martin reported to the March board meeting

that this was the prevailing opinion at a recent generation seminar he attended. "There are 100s of little schemes being proposed," he said. Mr Martin said those at the seminar were unanimous in their opinion that the major

stumbling block to further hydro development was the price setting by Electricorp which shifted the real costs of generation from Electricorp Production onto Trans power. "The six and a half cents a unit cost is split four and a half cents to Electricorp Production and two cents to Transpower," he said. General manager Peter

Till said ii was farcical to suggest that it cost as much to build and maintain a transmission tower every few kilometres as it did to build the huge hydro dams on the Waikato River. Secretary treasurer Norm Annand said this was made to appear even more so by the 13 cents a unit cost of electricity from the Tongariro Power Development.