Watts happening at Monowai

Probably the largest procession of motor vehicles that has been seen in Invercargill left yesterday morning for the Southland Power Board’s power station at Monowai, where the official opening ceremony was performed this afternoon. Some 45 motor cars and three or four char-a-bancs left Dee street shortly after 8am, conveying between 200 and 400 persons who intended to witness the ceremony.

The power house is a reinforced concrete building 80 feet long and 69ft wide. On the main floor are the turbines, generators and exciters, while the switchboard gallery, telephone office and battery room occupy a mezzanine floor above the main floor. Under this switchboard gallery is the valve house, containing the valves for the main and exciter turbines, the main generating field rheostats, the exciter bus pipes and the cable racks. 

The main floor of the power house is of the "tank" type, so that the Waiau could rise 4ft 6in above the floor level without stopping the operation of the plant, though no known flood in that river has ever come within 6ft of that point. The main turbines are of the double runner Francis and Entry type. The valves are hydraulically operated from the main floor, and the turbines discharge into tail races built in beneath the power house and 

heavily reinforced between piers. The generators are each of 2000kW capacity, at an 85 percent power factor, and are equipped with temperature indicator coils and Mortz Price protective gear. 

Though the power house will accommodate only three 2000kW units at present, the south end of the building is so designed that the present building can be doubled in length, and a further 6000kW installed as soon as the load warrants it. From Monowai two transmission lines, 100ft apart, run to Winton, and from there branch to Gore and Invercargill, but at Winton interconnection between the lines is provided so that (a) Gore or Invercargill 

can be connected to either or both of the Monowai and Winton lines, or (b) both Gore and Invercargill can be fed from either of the Monowai-Winton lines. The sub-stations at Winton, Invercargill, and Gore act as receiving stations for the Monowai power at 66,000 volts, and it is distributed all over Southland, after being transformed to 11,000V at these points. The duty of supplying energy through the Southland Board’s territory has required 

the erection of 75,000 poles, 450,000 insulators and 14,000 miles of wire.

Thank God polio plague is over

Presumably all Sunday schools will reopen to-morrow after the long vacation of over four months. There is good reason to believe that no small difficulty will be experienced in gathering all the children together again and getting the rolls back to normal strength. Some schools propose to begin with a united thanksgiving service for parents and children, and this might prove to be a helpful plan.

Idea won’t be buried

The Dunedin Cremation Society is not allowing matters to rest. The result of the petition which was signed by over 700 citizens was that the City Council decided to erect a crematorium provided the society subscribed the sum of £500 towards the total cost. At a meeting on Thursday night the society decided to make a strenuous effort to obtain that sum, and appointed collectors to endeavour to raise it. — ODT, 2.5.1925