Wind Power
The Ruahine & Tararua Wind Farms
On the Tararua Rangers is the TrustPower Tararua wind farm, along a 5 kilometer (3 mile) stretch of the range, with 103 wind turbines generating 67.98MW of electricity - enough for 30,000 homes. This feeds into a national grid substation behind Palmerston North. The next stage - adding an extra 31 wind turbines, each generating 3 MW of electricity - enough for 45,000 homes. For more information about the TrustPower wind farm, click here
On the Ruahine Rangers is the Meridian Energy Te Apiti wind farm, 55 wind turbines each generating 1.65 MW of electricity - enough for 45,000 average homes. This feeds into a national grid substation near Woodville. For more information about the Te Apiti wind farm, click here
Searching for Te Apiti on youtube has several videos on the windfarms.
On the Ruahine Rangers, South of the TrustPower wind farm, NZ Windfarms has begun construction of the Te Rere Hau wind farm, 97 turbines generating 48.5 MW - enough for about 18,000 homes. For more information about Te Rere Hau, click here
The Palmerston North City Council is investigating options for placing wind turbines as well. Another wind farm, Motorimu, is going through Resource Consent process to build on the Tararua Rangers south of Palmerston North City. This is currently before a Government Review group.
On May 30, 2004 the contractors federation membership was invited to tour the construction site. The Meridian construction pictures on this page were from then. Many thanks to Meridian Energy and their Contractors.
|
The Tararua Wind Power Generation Farm looking North with the |
 Ruahine Te Apiti Wind Farm in cloudy conditions |
 The Tararua Trustpower Turbines |
Image to give some scale of a Te Apiti Turbine blade
Drive mtor for the 400 tonne crane |
 Te Rere Hau - 2 bladed |
|
|
Daniel Smioth Cranes - a real 'behemoth'
|
Welding on the first section - specialist welders from Australia. |
 |
The finished product. |
What an awesome thing these turbines are for the Manawatu and Tararua provinces !! Our gentle giants.
YES2WIND.CO.NZ Greenpeace pro-wind website