Meridian confirms Tararuas wind site

By CHRIS DANIELS energy writer

Meridian Energy has unveiled more details of its wind farm, which will be built near Woodville, in the northern Wairarapa.

The state-owned power company has been planning the wind farm for some time, but has until now been coy about its exact location.

Details of the farm, which will generate between 82 and 96 megawatts of power, were flagged by Energy Minister Pete Hodgson in Parliament.

About 55 turbines will be built at the site, which Meridian says will be New Zealand's "most productive wind farm", generating enough electricity to power 32,300 homes.

Production time (the percentage of time the wind is blowing at enough speed to generate electricity) was estimated as 45 per cent, compared with a world average of 23 per cent.

New Zealand's biggest thermal power station, at Huntly, has an output of 1000MW, and the Clyde Dam can generate 432MW.

Meridian chief executive Keith Turner said development of the Te Apiti project was "a small but significant step in meeting future electricity demand".

If resource consents are granted for the whole project, construction could begin early next year, and the first turbine could be making electricity by the end of the year.

Hodgson said a Ministry of Economic Development study suggested wind had the potential to deliver almost 10,000 gigawatt-hours of electricity a year, which is roughly a quarter of current total generation.

New Zealand now generated only about 150 gigawatt-hours of power each year from wind.

The use of wind power was about to expand rapidly, said Hodgson, because the price gap - the cost of generation when compared with the cheapest fossil fuel - was now almost closed.

Hodgson said the Government was amending the Resource Management Act to give greater weight to renewable energy.

Trustpower is already well advanced in its plans to more than double the size of its existing farm on land not far from the new Meridian site, also in the Tararua ranges.

Transpower, the owner and manager of the national electricity grid, said yesterday that the Te Apiti wind farm would be the first to be directly connected to the grid.

"Interconnection of renewable generation through the grid provides security benefits which cannot be realised by standalone projects," said Transpower's new chief executive, Ralph Craven.

The direct connection has been made part of the project because the wind farm will generate enough power to make it worth paying for the new transmission lines and because of its proximity to the national grid.

Meridian is yet to select a turbine manufacturer, but the project will use what it calls "megawatt-class Machines" - capable of generating up to 1.5MW of power each.

They will be the biggest wind turbines in New Zealand, each up to three times bigger than Meridian's only other turbine, on Wellington's Brooklyn Hill.

A Meridian spokesman said plans for the wind farm were well advanced and the announcement had not been brought forward because of the power crisis.