The Rotokawa Power Station is a
geothermal power station owned and operated by
Mercury Energy
Mercury NZ Limited is a New Zealand electricity generation and multi-product utility retailer of electricity, gas, broadband and mobile telephone services. All the company's electricity generation is renewable.
In August 2021, Mercury acquired ...
. It is located approximately 10 km north east of
Taupo in
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 ...
. The station uses a
binary cycle A binary cycle is a method for generating electrical power from geothermal resources and employs two separate fluid cycles, hence binary cycle. The primary cycle extracts the geothermal energy from the reservoir, and secondary cycle converts the he ...
manufactured by
Ormat Industries
Ormat Technologies, Inc. is an international company based in Reno, Nevada, United States. Ormat supplies alternative and renewable geothermal energy technology. The company has built over 190 power plants and installed over 3,200 MW. As of J ...
.
In May 2008, work began on the nearby
Nga Awa Purua Power Station
Nga Awa Purua, also known as Rotokawa II, is a geothermal power station located near Taupo in New Zealand. The project was developed by Mighty River Power (now Mercury Energy). Nga Awa Purua is New Zealand's second largest geothermal power station ...
.
Environmental aspects
Due to the high temperatures associated with the geothermal vent here, this locale is an occurrence of
extremophile
An extremophile (from Latin ' meaning "extreme" and Greek ' () meaning "love") is an organism that is able to live (or in some cases thrive) in extreme environments, i.e. environments that make survival challenging such as due to extreme temper ...
micro-organisms that can thrive on the high vent water temperature.
[C.Michael Hogan. 2010]
''Extremophile''
eds. E.Monosson and C.Cleveland. Encyclopedia of Earth. National Council for Science and the Environment, Washington DC
See also
*
Geothermal power in New Zealand
Geothermal power in New Zealand is a small but significant part of the energy generation capacity of the country, providing approximately 17% of the country's electricity
*
List of power stations in New Zealand
This is a list of power stations in New Zealand.
The list is not exhaustive – only power stations over 0.5 MW and significant power stations below 0.5 MW are listed.
Power plants in New Zealand have different generating roles ...
References
Geothermal power stations in New Zealand
Taupō District
Buildings and structures in the Taupo District
{{NewZealand-powerstation-stub