REPLACING COAL.

Taranaki Daily News, 6 July 1921, Page 8

REPLACING COAL.

ELECTRICITY PROSPECTS. AN INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION.

An address on the national influence of hydro-electric power was given at this week’s meeting of the Wellington Rotary Club by Mr. Lawrence Birks, chief electrical engineer of the Public Works Department. Mr. Birks said the general adoption of hydro-electricity would have many important influences on the community. The first to appear would be the effect on municipal undertakings, the replacement of steam and gas-driven electric power stations by static sub-stations, which in contrast with the power-sta-tions were clean, neat, and unobtrusive, needed little attendance, using no fuel and making no smoke, requiring a much smaller capital outlay on the part of the city, and capable of yielding a larger financial margin than a fuel station and at lower selling prices.

The influences on the industrial life of the community, Mr. Birks said, were a notable reduction in operating costs, as compared with the use of fuel-driven plants, a great improvement in the cleanliness, healthiness, and safety of the working conditions; and, most important of all, the decentralisation of industries because of the facility with which small power units could be economically installed and run. This enabled them to look forward to a revival of cottage industries. The chief special industrial influence to attract attention was the effect on coal-mining. Allowing for losses in distribution, SO,OOO horse-power ot electricity, in addition to that already installed, would be capable of replacing half the present eoal consumption in New Zealand. The projected development on the basis set down by Mr. Parry, onefifth of a horsepower per head, would §ive three times tu much nowe. us

would replace half the coal consumption. Mr. Birks referred to the use of electieal power for traction purposes by rail and road, and the great demand for current by the agricultural and dairying industries. The most important change, though -f’jbably the. slowest to develop, would be in the domestic life of the community. . lie- use of electricity for lighting hud been long known,; but it was in other respects -in cooking, heating, operating small domestic machinery—that electricity would effect a revolution in domestic economy, with a great saving in labor.