week plus £1 per day if the lake was filled before 19 August. At midnight on 21 July 1956, lake filling began and the lake level commenced rising at an average of an hour. As the lake began to fill, increasing levels of water began to flow from the drainage channels behind the grout curtain in the right abutment, which indicated that the grout curtain was faulty. Investigations concluded that further grouting would have to be performed (which took about a fortnight) before the lake could be raised to its final level. The decision was made to allow the lake to fill to no further than the crest of the spillway while the contractors began drilling and inserting more grout. Meanwhile at 12:30 pm on 23 July a speedboat driven by Ken Harliwich and accompanied by Willis Wetherall to leave Roxburgh for Alexandria making the first boat trip on the new lake. By 11:20 am on 23 July 1956, the lake had filled to the crest of the spillway water. With a desperate shortage of electricity affecting the South Island, commissioning of the generating unit 1 immediately commenced under the direction of electrical resident engineer Eric Gordon “Sandy” Sandelin. The urgency meant that present from head office in Wellington were the State Hydro-Electric Department chief engineer M. G. “Bill” Latta and its chief power plant engineer W. A. S. Surridge. Also present was the future station superintendent A. Rose. Once the engineers were satisfied that the machine was fit for service, it was connected at 6 pm to the national grid. Due to the reduced head, the machine's output was limited to 30 MW. By the end of the next day generating unit 2 had completed commissioning and was also connected to the system. This allowed the 220 kV line to Islington to be brought into service as two machines were needed to provide sufficient reactive power to charge the long length of line. The third generating unit was commissioned on 18 August 1956 and the fourth unit on 11 December 1956. The power station was officially opened on 3 November 1956 by Stanley Goosman in the presence of 600 invited guests, plus members of the public. Delivery of the four remaining generating units began late in 1959, with unit 5 being commissioned on 19 April 1961, unit 6 on 18 August 1961, unit 7 on 13 March 1962 and