Te Apiti is a

wind farm A wind farm or wind park, also called a wind power station or wind power plant, is a group of wind turbines in the same location used Wind power, to produce electricity. Wind farms vary in size from a small number of turbines to several hundre ...

owned and 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 ...

. It is located on 11.5 km² of land north of the Manawatu Gorge in the

North Island The North Island, also officially named Te Ika-a-Māui, is one of the two main islands of New Zealand, separated from the larger but much less populous South Island by the Cook Strait. The island's area is , making it the world's 14th-largest ...

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 ...

. At 90.75 MW, it was New Zealand's largest capacity wind farm until September 2007, when the third stage of the nearby Tararua Wind Farm was completed. The $100 million wind farm consists of 55 separate

turbines A turbine ( or ) (from the Greek , ''tyrbē'', or Latin ''turbo'', meaning vortex) is a rotary mechanical device that extracts energy from a fluid flow and converts it into useful Work (physics), work. The work produced by a turbine can be used ...

capable of generating 1.65 MW each, representing a total capacity of 90.75 MW. Each turbine is atop a tower. It is fitted with 3 blades each 35 metres in length."Intelligent energy metering", Electrical Automation, October/November 2007.

Location

The site near the Manawatu Gorge area is ideal for wind farms. The Tararua and

Ruahine Range The Ruahine Range is the largest of several mountain ranges in the North Island of New Zealand that form a ridge running parallel with the east coast of the island between East Cape and Wellington. The ridge is at its most pronounced from the cen ...

s provide a barrier to the predominantly westerly winds that flow across New Zealand. Between the two ranges lies a lower range of hills that serve to funnel the wind.

TrustPower Manawa Energy Limited, formerly Trustpower, is a New Zealand electricity generation company that offers bespoke electricity products to commercial and industrial customers across New Zealand. Manawa Energy has 26 hydro-electricity schemes, with a ...

, another New Zealand electricity generator and retailer, operates a wind farm on the south side of the Manawatu Gorge.

Carbon offsets

The Te Apiti wind farm is also a

carbon offset A carbon offset is a reduction or removal of emissions of carbon dioxide or other greenhouse gases made in order to compensate for emissions made elsewhere. Offsets are measured in tonnes of carbon dioxide-equivalent (CO2e). One ton of carb ...

project. In 2005 the British bank HSBC purchased 125,000 tonnes worth of carbon credits from Meridian generated by the wind farm. Meridian Energy also sold the Dutch government 530,000 tonnes of carbon credits from Te Apiti. The price per tonne was considered to be about $10.40 a tonne. In both cases, the carbon credits for Te Apiti were from New Zealand's

Assigned amount units An assigned amount unit is a tradable "Kyoto unit" or "carbon credit" representing an allowance to emit greenhouse gases comprising "one metric tonne of carbon dioxide equivalent, calculated using global warming potentials". Assigned amount units a ...

allocated under the Kyoto Protocol. The New Zealand Government granted the AAUs to Meridian Energy as an incentive for carbon neutral power development under the Projects to Reduce Emissions programme (or PRE). As of 2007, installed capacity of wind turbines in New Zealand has reached 321 MW and a further 46.5 MW is under construction.

Transmission

Te Apiti was the first wind farm in New Zealand to connect directly to Transpower's national grid. Previously constructed windfarms, including Hau Nui and Tararua, connected to the national grid via local distribution and sub-transmission lines. Electricity from the 55 turbines is sent via a network of underground cables to the Te Apiti substation near the lookout, where the electricity is stepped-up to 110 kV for transmission. A single-circuit transmission line connects the wind farm to the national grid at Transpower's Woodville substation.

Virtual field trip

The New Zealand online education programme, LEARNZ, conducted a virtual field trip to Te Apiti Wind Farm in April 2008. Over 1500 New Zealand school students joined LEARNZ teacher Darren on this trip. Telephone conferences were held between students and wind farm staff. Two telephone conferences were held while Darren and Meridian staff were on top of a 70m high wind turbine.LEARNZ Virtual Field Trips
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References

External links