St George County Council

St George County Council was a county council and local government-owned electricity supply utility in the St George area of southern Sydney, Australia. It supplied electricity to consumers in the Kogarah, Hurstville, Rockdale and Bexley Municipalities (Bexley merged with Rockdale in 1949). It existed, from 4 December 1920, until 1 January 1980 when its operations and assets, and those of Mackellar County Council and Brisbane Water County Council, were merged into the existing Sydney County Council. It obtained its bulk power from the New South Wales Government Railways (after 1932, New South Wales Department of Railways), until 1953 when the electricity generation assets of that entity became part of the Electricity Commission of New South Wales.

It was the first of many county councils, which were an important part of the mixed economy that existed in New South Wales, during the interwar and post-war periods of the 20th Century. Of the various publicly owned trading entities, the country councils were the only significant ones controlled by local governments. It was a locally owned enterprise, rather than a state-owned enterprise.

The St George County Council area was that of its four constituent municipalities, Kogarah, Hurstville, Rockdale, and Bexley; the area lying west of the Botany Bay, between Cooks River and Georges River and to the south of Wolli Creek.

The first electricity supply in the St George area, was that for Thomas Saywell's tramway, which ran from Rockdale railway station to the beach at Brighton-le-Sands. It was converted from steam to electric power, in 1900. An Act of the NSW Parliament, would have permitted Saywell to provide electric street lighting, for which he would have been paid, but it was never passed.

Saywell constructed a coal-fuelled powerhouse, in what had been stables at the rear of his New Brighton Hotel, at what is now Brighton-le-Sands. It used a three-wire (-240V — 0V / Ground — +240V) direct current system, giving 480V d.c. for the trams—Saywell's trams had two trolley poles, one positive and the other for negative—and 240V d.c. for other uses. The powerhouse included a large bank of batteries. As well as powering the trams and lighting his hotel, Saywell's powerhouse did supply some other customers with 'electric current'. These consumers included, by around 1911, some street lighting in the Municipality of Rockdale and some shop premises in Rockdale.

As early as 1908, some citizens were advocating that Rockdale, in cooperation with the other municipalities in the St George area, should buy Saywell's 'Electric Works' and tramway, to provide the area with electricity and expand the electric tramways. As the end of his tramway concession neared, Saywell expressed interest in providing electric street lighting for the neighbouring St George municipalities of Bexley and Kogarah, as well as more lighting in Rockdale. More distant Hurstville was almost certainly outside the distance range that Saywell's relatively low-voltage direct current system could serve, even if the small system had sufficient capacity to do that, which was unlikely.

At the expiry of Saywell's 30-year tramway operating concession in 1914, the Government Railways took over the tramway, retiring Saywell's aging trams. The government trams worked on a different current collection arrangement (one trolley pole and rail return). The tramway supply and overhead was reconfigured, and, initially, Saywell's power station continued to provide power for the government tram. In December 1917, a new tramway substation entered service, at Rockdale, supplied by a high-voltage a.c. power line from Newtown, and ultimately powered from White Bay Power Station. It was later stated that it was around the time, when Saywell's concession expired, that the idea of the St George area's being supplied with bulk power, from the NSW Railways, first took hold.

Saywell continued to generate electrical power until October 1923—also continuing to supply power to Rockdale's electric street lighting and his other consumers—despite no longer supplying the electric tramway after 1917. The tramway still was used to move coal wagons from the railway, at Rockdale, to his power station. However, Saywell's d.c. system was far too small, too unreliable, and too antiquated to serve the growing St George area.