24 Electricity as an Illuminant. 



whatever money they had in hands. We are supplying the 

 docks of Galway for the last two years. We have simply a couple 

 of arc lamps and eight fifty candle incandescent lamps. Mr. 

 Greenhill quoted at the beginning of his address the cost of a 

 Well's hght, and I find that we supply a lo ampere lamp for the 

 same cost as a Well's light. We are putting in an installation 

 in the Galway Express newspaper office, and we intend to print 

 the newspaper and all the jobbing work by electricity. The way 

 we charge for that is 2d per hour per horse-power. Of course 

 that is dearer than a gas-engine working at the Belfast price, but 

 it is not dearer than a gas-engine working at the Galway price of 

 gas, which is 5s. 6d. I may say that our central station only 

 costs ^100 a year to run. We have spent up to the present 

 £j,ooo. I don't at all agree with Mr. Greenhill when he says 

 that a private installation can compete with a central station if 

 it is properly managed and a fair price charged. If you work 

 with a steam-engine and get up steam for a few hours lighting 

 there is an enormous waste of coal, etc. One gentleman in my 

 district has a special lighting station of his own, and he actually 

 pays £$0 a year for repairs alone. My position is that elec- 

 tricity can be generated in a central station and sold as cheaply 

 as gas manufactured from coal in the same place. One does 

 not need to be an electrician to run an electrical central station ; 

 the fact is we run ours with two labourers. An important 

 and serious difficulty in setting up a central station for the 

 supply of current to your consumers is having to wait for your 

 consumers. When gas was established it had not the competi- 

 tion that electric light has ; it had only to beat down the old 

 candles and very bad oil lamps. You must be prepared for 

 some time to work without profit, and possibly at a loss. 



The duty of a steam-engine very much depends on the 

 constancy of its work. You have heard from Mr. Greenhill of 

 6d., 7d., and 8d. a unit being charged ; but Mr. Preece, the 

 electrician of the Post Office, has discovered that a steam- 

 engine generating electricity for electro-plating can produce it 

 at one-third of a penny per unit ; — the reason of this, is, that 



