Mill Creek Wind Farm is a wind farm in the Ohariu Valley near

Wellington, New Zealand Wellington ( mi, Te Whanganui-a-Tara or ) is the capital city of New Zealand. It is located at the south-western tip of the North Island, between Cook Strait and the Remutaka Range. Wellington is the second-largest city in New Zealand by metr ...

. The wind farm is operated by

Meridian Energy Meridian Energy Limited is a New Zealand electricity generator and retailer. The company generates the largest proportion of New Zealand's electricity, generating 35 percent of the country's electricity in the year ending December 2014, and is ...

and has 26

wind turbines A wind turbine is a device that converts the kinetic energy of wind into electrical energy. Hundreds of thousands of large turbines, in installations known as wind farms, now generate over 650 gigawatts of power, with 60 GW added each year. ...

. The application for resource consents described the project as having a total capacity of up to 71.3MW. The wind farm covers an area of approximately and was planned to use 31

Siemens Siemens AG ( ) is a German multinational conglomerate corporation and the largest industrial manufacturing company in Europe headquartered in Munich with branch offices abroad. The principal divisions of the corporation are ''Industry'', '' ...

2.3MW wind turbines. A 33,000-volt power line connects the wind farm to Transpower's Wilton substation, where the farm's electricity is injected into both

Wellington Electricity Wellington Electricity, registered as Wellington Electricity Lines Limited, is an electricity distribution company, based in Wellington, New Zealand. Wellington Electricity supplies electricity to approximately 400,000 consumers through over 1 ...

's local distribution network and the national grid. The resource consents were granted in February 2009 with conditions, including a limit of 29 turbines and a maximum height of . Local Ohariu Valley residents who opposed the development lodged an appeal to the

Environment Court The Environment Court of New Zealand ( mi, Te Kōti Taiao o Aotearoa) is a specialist court for plans, resource consents and environmental issues. It mainly deals with issues arising under the Resource Management Act, meaning that it covers a w ...

. In August 2011, the Environment Court approved the resource consents for the project, subject to a limit of 26 turbines. Construction began in late 2012, and the first electricity was generated in May 2014. It became fully operational in October 2014.

References

External links

Meridian Energy website
{{wind power Wellington City Wind farms in New Zealand

See also

References

External links