CHEAP POWER

Sun (Auckland), Volume I, Issue 267, 1 February 1928, Page 12

CHEAP POWER

| ! NEW ELECTRICAL SCHEME WILL SERVE LONDON

COMMISSIONER’S PLANS

Cheaper electricity for millions of people in London and South-east England is foreshadowed under the gigantic £14,000,000 scheme, drawn up by the Electricity Commissioners, for the co-ordination of production and supply of power over an area of 8,828 squqje miles. This area will embrace London, the counties of Middlesex, Hertford, Essex, Kent, Surrey, Berks, Bucks, Bedford, Cambridge and Huntingdon, and parts of the counties of Sussex, Hampshire and Suffolk. It is the greatest scheme of the kind ever undertaken in Great Britain, and is part of the vast project, worked out under the Electricity Supply Act of 1926, which in about ten years (it is hoped) wall transform the entire machinery for the production and distribution of light and power in Great Britain, and bring cheaper supplies within the reach of almost everybody. 120 Fewer Generating Stations At present there are 135 generating stations in the area stretching from Peterborough to Brighton. When the scheme is in full operation there will be only 18—13 existing ones, two already projected at Battersea and Chiswick, and three new ones. One of these will be near St. Neots; another probably at Barking, and the third in the south-west of the area. Other existing stations will act merely as links in the transmission system, receiving supplies from the super-generating stations, transforming it to lower pressure for domestic and industrial use, and distributing it far and near. Cost The estimated cost of the whole of the transmission system is £9,000,000, of which it is suggested £7,000,000 should be spent by the Central Board (which is responsible for carrying out the schemes of the Commissioners) and £2,000,000 by the London and Home Counties Joint Electricity Authority. In addition there will be an expenditure of about £5,500,000 by owners of generating stations on extensions. In London underground cables will be used for distributing power, but in the country rural districts there will be overhead lines carried on 80ft. high steel lattice towers, erected a quarter of a mile apart, and designed so as not to spoil the amenities of the countryside. Cables are three limes as costly as lines. Discussing the advantages of the scheme. Sir John Snell, chairman of the Electricity Commissioners, said: “I can hold out to the public the certain hope that there will be a reduction in the price of light and power in the immediate years to come.” At present 1,560 million units of electricity are consumed' in the area, and. at the average price of 2.2 d per unit, yield £14,000,000 revenue. The Commissioners estimate that by 1940 the consumption will be 4,855 million units and (by a series of economies in production) the average price 13d per unit. If the price remained at the present level, he pointed out, these 4.855 million units would yield £44,000,000; at lid per unit they will cost the public only £28,000,000 a saving of £16,000,000. The project, he thought, would he*) to curtail the fog nuisance in London, not only because there would-be fewer generating stations burning; coal, but because the cheapening of supplies would increase domestic use and thus lead to fewer open fires at home and less pollution of the air. In a series of supplementary details forwarded with the project, the Commissioners contemplate that the Board should be able to start supplying by August, 1928, and estimate that in the five years 1929 to 1934 there will be a resultant saving to the electrical undertakings (of which there are 165) in the area of nearly £5,000,000, or £1,000,000 a year. This cheme is the second drawn up by the Electricity Commissioners for the Board. Their first, adopted last spring, covers Central Scotland. In November, third report, embracing the Midlands, will be presented, and early in the year will come a fourth dealing with Lancashire and Yorkshire.