Trustpower is planning a 300MW wind farm at Lake Mahinerangi, south of Dunedin. This would be effectively co-located with their existing Waipori hydro station, allowing them to fully exploit the wind/hydro generation/storage synergy. It would also be able to use the existing cables to tap into the national grid. All going well, they'll be applying for resource consent in July.
I was going to say that each wind farm proposal in New Zealand seems bigger than the last - but it would be difficult to beat Meridian's 650MW monster planned for Otago. Still, 300MW is the size of a decent hydro-dam, and with the wind resource we have here, almost as productive. If this trend keeps up, we'll be well on the way to returning to a mostly renewable energy system by the end of the decade.
2 comments:
And the CEO's name is Keith Tempest..
Mike
Posted by Anonymous : 1/10/2006 07:49:00 AM
If the Lammerlaw project goes ahead as well then these two projects combined will probably result in over 1000 MW of wind capacity installed in Otago. That's nearly double what Project Aqua would have produced, and all without destroying the landscape for ever.
I'd expect that new transmission lines will need to be built between the Lammerlaw region and the Waitaki (Benmore probably) to allow this power to be conveyed north - that doesn't bother me so much, but this may prove to be the sticking point of the project with some people. Building 400 kv transmission lines will result in less overall landscape impact, as it will allow other lines to be decommissioned.
I've contacted Meridian in an attempt to obtain more information about the Lammerlaw project, but none has been forthcoming as yet.
All up, another good news story.
Posted by nzidealist : 1/10/2006 04:55:00 PM
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