More solar

Back in November, RNZ reported on the scale of changes we needed to make to decarbonise the economy. One of those changes was to increase the amount of solar generation by 180% by 2025, and 2200% by 2035. The good news is that we're well on the way to doing it: in 2021 three projects (Lodestone, Kōwhai Park and Waiterimu) were announced which would meet the 2025 target by themselves. And today another one was announced: a 147 MW project in Te Aroha:

A new solar farm proposed in eastern Waikato could generate enough electricity to power 30,000 homes if its application under the Covid Recovery Act is successful.

Harmony Energy New Zealand has unveiled plans to construct 329,000 solar panels on 182 hectares of a 260-hectare site at Te Aroha West.

The UK-based company has been granted approval to speed up its application under the Covid-19 Recovery (Fast-Track Consenting) Act 2020 but is yet to hear if the project has been approved.

Harmony director Pete Grogan said the solar panels could produce up to 147 megawatts of power at peak times. All the electricity would flow directly into the national grid for use by homes and businesses.

As with other recent rural solar projects, its dual-use, with sheep pasture beneath the panels (it will however displace cows to do this, so that's a definite emissions reduction as well).

The speed grid-scale solar is taking off in New Zealand is surprising - 500MW announced in the last three months. We're already well on the way to meeting that 2035 target, and hopefully we can exceed it quickly enough to drive dirty generation off the grid.