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TeApiti, soon to be the Southern Hemisphere's largest wind farm, produces first power (05-Aug-'04)

Electricity from Meridian's TeApiti wind farm site near Palmerston North flowed into the National Grid this morning when the first turbines were turned on by the Energy Minister, Pete Hodgson.

The ceremony marked the official launch of the wind farm: Currently only a handful of the turbines are operational at the site however on completion, later this year, all 55 1.65MW machines will be fully operational and at that time they will be producing sufficient amounts of clean, sustainable electricity to meet the needs of more than 40,000 houses.

Once completed the site will be the largest wind farm in the Southern Hemisphere and will have substantially contributed to year-on-year growth in installed wind energy of 365%. The windfarm is also the first which is connected directly to the National Grid: Others are embedded into local electricity grids.

The Minister noted, during his speech, that wind energy could supply 20% of the country's total electricity needs. During last month's Wind Energy conference the figure mentioned by Transpower was 30%.
Whatever the precise number it is clear that the wind energy sector is undergoing a period of rapid growth and hundreds of megawatts of other developments are now being considered around the country. This great interest has been stimulated by enormous public support for wind power and by the fact that wind energy is now cost competitive with other forms of thermal generation. Industry growth is also receiving additional impetus as a result of New Zealand's world class wind energy resource and large installed hydro capacity as well as the shortage of generation resulting from the rapid decline of the Maui natural gas field.

This Government, which has been supportive of sustainable forms of electricity generation, granted the project tradeable greenhouse gas emission credits. These credits have enabled TeApiti to go ahead sooner than it might otherwise have done.

Download the Government's press release (84kB)

The Energy Minister, Pete Hodgson, turning on the wind farm.



A portion of TeApiti site on the morning of the opening

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