Moresby

Hydro-Electricity For

Tenders Called For Installation

From Our Own Correspondent

Port Moresby. April 22.

THINGS are beginning to move on the Rouna Hydro-Electric scheme.

Tenders have been called in the Com monwealth Gazette for the supply and installation of the generating plant, and it is understood that the bulk of the bids are likely to come from overseas firms.

The tenders close in Melbourne on July 19.

The total estimated cost of the job is somewhere around £200,000, on present equipment and labour costs, but as the job is expected to take about three years to complete, past experience on such projects indicates that there may be some varia tion on these figures.

The main installations —intake works, flume, etc. —will be constructed for an output of from 4,000 to 5,000 kilowatts, md the first section of this scheme will *ive the town about 3,000 kilowatts.

Present consumption of the Port Moresby irea is from 600 to 900 kilowatts, but this :s rising steadily as the town develops, carticularly with the new residential areas coming into use.

Meanwhile, as an interim stage there ire to be three new generating plants at ;he Konedobu powerhouse, and work is in progress on the erection of two of these mits. The two alternators for this equip nent were supposed to have been shipped :rom Britain at the end of March, but vhen this report was written nobody in :he Territory had any idea just where hey were.

But, with the optimism which has survived disillusionment repeatedly, the electricity wallahs are convinced that the alternators will be on the Moresby wharf by the time that the bits and pieces of the generators are all in place. There is, however, the third generator complete with alternator already at Port Moresby, but the manufacturer’s agent in Australia has so far not sent an assembling engineer to put the plant together. Of course, it may be that short notice was the trouble: it is, after all, only about 21 to three years since the order was placed for this equipment. Meanwhile, the Navy has remembered that it owns the Polar engine, the mainstay of the present anticipated power supply. The Administration is hoping that the Navy can continue to operate without its Polar plant for a bit longer for its loss right now would put most of Port Moresby on a candle-light basis.

But compared with the black-out schedule in Sydney, little old Port Moresby hasn’t done too badly on its junkpile plant, and certainly both +he immediate and long-range prospect is much more hopeful than for Sydney citizens.