The Mahinerangi Wind Farm is a wind farm on the north side of

Lake Mahinerangi Lake Mahinerangi is a lake formed when a dam was built on the Waipori River for hydroelectric generation. The lake is to the west of Dunedin in New Zealand's South Island. Construction of the dam started in 1903 and since 1907, power has been p ...

, around 50 km west of

Dunedin Dunedin ( ; mi, Ōtepoti) is the second-largest city in the South Island of New Zealand (after Christchurch), and the principal city of the Otago region. Its name comes from , the Scottish Gaelic name for Edinburgh, the capital of Scotland. Th ...

, in

Otago Otago (, ; mi, Ōtākou ) is a region of New Zealand located in the southern half of the South Island administered by the Otago Regional Council. It has an area of approximately , making it the country's second largest local government reg ...

New Zealand New Zealand ( mi, Aotearoa ) is an island country in the southwestern Pacific Ocean. It consists of two main landmasses—the North Island () and the South Island ()—and over 700 smaller islands. It is the sixth-largest island count ...

. Stage one of the wind farm, generating 36 MW, was commissioned in March 2011, and an additional 160 MW is consented to be commissioned in further stages. The wind farm is owned and operated by Mercury NZ Ltd. It was the second major wind farm to be built in the South Island.

History

Resource consent was granted in 2007 and later confirmed after an appeal to the Environment Court. Construction of stage 1 of the wind farm, consisting of twelve turbines, began in September 2010. Vestas V90-3MW turbines were chosen for the wind farm, having previously been used for stage 3 of

Tararua Wind Farm The Tararua Wind Farm is a wind farm owned and operated by Mercury NZ Ltd. It is located on 700ha of farmland on the Tararua Ranges of New Zealand. It has become New Zealand's largest capacity wind farm, with a total capacity of 161MW. The wind ...

in 2007. Turbines were shipped to

Port Chalmers Port Chalmers is a town serving as the main port of the city of Dunedin, New Zealand. Port Chalmers lies ten kilometres inside Otago Harbour, some 15 kilometres northeast of Dunedin's city centre. History Early Māori settlement The origi ...

, and trucked through Dunedin to their final site. The wind farm generated its first electricity on 21 February 2011, with the first two turbines being commissioned. All twelve stage one turbines were completed and generating electricity by the end of March 2011.

Location

The wind farm will be contained within of land at an elevation of 600 to 730 metres above sea level and about 50 kilometres west of

. Most of the land in the proposed site is pasture grazed by sheep and cattle.TrustPower
- AEE Volume I

Stage 2

Stage 2 at Mahinerangi is proposed for up to 100 wind turbines producing 160MW and an annual output of over 600GWh. Resource consents were granted in 2009.

Transmission

Electricity generated from Stage 1 turbines is injected into the nearby Deep Stream and Waipori hydro schemes. This utilised the existing 33kV transmission line and avoided the cost of additional transmission infrastructure. Electricity from Stage 1 and the hydro schemes is then injected into either Dunedin's local distribution network, or into Transpower's

Halfway Bush Halfway Bush is a suburb of the New Zealand city of Dunedin. It is located to the northwest of the city centre, close to the point at which Taieri Road becomes the winding rural Three Mile Hill Road. It was this road which gave the suburb its n ...

- Balclutha-

Gore Gore may refer to: Places Australia * Gore, Queensland * Gore Creek (New South Wales) * Gore Island (Queensland) Canada * Gore, Nova Scotia, a rural community * Gore, Quebec, a township municipality * Gore Bay, Ontario, a township on Manitouli ...

110 kV line at Berwick. Stage 2 and beyond is too large to inject into the Waipori/Deep Stream system. Instead, it will inject into Transpower's Halfway Bush-

Roxburgh Roxburgh () is a civil parish and formerly a royal burgh, in the historic county of Roxburghshire in the Scottish Borders, Scotland. It was an important trading burgh in High Medieval to early modern Scotland. In the Middle Ages it had at leas ...

110 kV line, which passes a short distance south of the wind farm.

References

External links