electrical equipment The State Hydro-electric Department undertook the design, purchase and installation and commissioning of the electrical equipment. Tenders for supply of the major electrical plant were issued in October 1949 with contracts awarded in May 1950 at a cost of £1,000,000 for the first four generating units. The State Hydro Department established itself on site in June 1953. Access to undertake their activities was first provided in August 1954 and erection of the first generating unit began with the first scroll case concreted in by March 1955. In November the joints in the stator windings of the generators were discovered to be faulty. Fortunately sufficient time became available to re-make all the joints when from 24 November 1955 for 23 work days up until the Christmas break the members of the New Zealand Workers Union were on strike in support of a union crane driver who had refused to lower a load being carried by his crane when the siren went for a tea break which the contractors estimated would delay the commencement of lake filling by two months. Construction of the transmission lines To connect the new power station to the major load centres, a long new 110 kV wood pole line was first built to Gore. The linemen then commenced constructing an long double-circuit 110 kV overhead transmission line using lattice steel towers to the Halfway Bush substation at Dunedin which was completed in July 1955 at a cost of approximately £500,000. The principal connection, however, was a new 220 kV single-circuit overhead transmission line built using lattice steel towers from Roxburgh to a new substation at Islington on the outskirts of Christchurch. By 1949 the surveys for this line were well under way with by 1951 the construction camps established and the material on order. By 1954 the first section of the line had been completed, which allowed it to carry power from Tekapo A to Christchurch. A second section as far south as the Waitaki Valley helped improve supply conditions during winter. The Roxburgh-Islington line cost approximately £1,000,000 and was completed by the winter of 1956. Lake filling With power cuts being applied across the South Island by June 1956, the Minister of Works requested the contractors to concentrate all resources on work that would bring forward lake filling as far as possible. To encourage the workforce, the government offered a bonus of £2 per