The Sun TUESDAY, DECEMBER 20, 1927. THE PRICE OF ELECTRICITY

Sun (Auckland), Volume I, Issue 232, 20 December 1927, Page 10

The Sun TUESDAY, DECEMBER 20, 1927. THE PRICE OF ELECTRICITY

SEASONABLE sentiment has inspired the Auckland ElectricPower Board to bring into operation immediately a comprehensive revision of its charges together with a belated reform of the complicated system of accountancy. This welcome decision was made yesterday in the right spirit of goodwill toward a multitude of consumers, all inclined to grumble as their hills fly upward. It need not be pretended that the public will be able to measure the extent of the projected concessions or to understand the board's methods of computation which, hitherto, have been as mysterious as the ways of electricity. And there is no occasion for laymen to feel abashed at their ignorance. The board’s experts themselves do not always know where they are or what they do, as witness the delightfully frank testimony of the chairman, Mr. W. J. Holdsworth, whose confession yesterday explained a lot that was obscure to consumers: —“The present charges are very complicated and even the board’s own meterreaders are sometimes at a loss to understand them.” Such a naive explanation is so perfect in itself that it requires no elaboration. Still, in fairness to the baffled meterreaders, it ought to be said, as the honest testimony of consumers, that these loyal servants of the board, if they made any error of calculation at all, always erred on the board’s side. That, at least, is beyond dispute. Ten thousand consumers would swear to it without hesitation and also would assert with the utmost confidence that the policy of the meter-readers, even when in doubt as to the vagaries of the mechanism and the complicated method of adjusting charges, has ever been to make certain that the supply of power should pay the board, and pay it well. All that the consumers have been able to understand in the past was the plain fact that the board’s charges at their lowest were high, were ruthlessly high, indeed, in comparison with the prices of electric-power in other and less pretentious centres. Since it admittedly would take at least two Philadelphia lawyers and a royal commission of chartered accountants to reduce the proposed new scale to detailed terms of a simple statement, the public may accept with lively satisfaction the. board’s assurance that the concessions will aggregate a sum of about £.12,000. It is an appreciable Christmas gift to a patient and long-suffering community. Those householders who have been blessed or cursed with nothing but all-electric kitchen apparatus will be able to roast their turkeys and bake their Yuletide cakes without any undue fear of the capricious dial on the switchboard —hitherto the clock of a burning extravagance.

It is a pity that the Power Board’s cheerful Christmas greeting to the public is marred, as usual, with a tag about the certainty of an addition to the cost of administration. If the scheme of revision means simplification of the administrative system, why should not the increase in efficiency mean a cheaper cost of administration? Simplicity ought to enable the board’s numerous staff to do more work in the same time instead of necessitating the introduction of more calculators. But let us be grateful for the concessions given at long last. The board has no reason to fear a serious shrinkage in its revenue. It has never failed to do well, and sometimes its policy has appeared to he nearer the too common standard of commercial greed for big profit than nearest to the less common aim at making a community utility serve first as a boon without the loss of public money. The acquisition of wealth is not the board’s real purpose. Meanwhile, the public will reciprocate good wishes, and will hope that the meterreaders may have less difficulty in the future about understanding the charges for electricity.