Te Apiti Wind Farm

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Construction of the Te Apiti wind farm

Te Apiti is a wind farm owned and operated by Meridian Energy Limited. It is located on 11.5 km² of land north of the Manawatu Gorge in the North Island of New Zealand. 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 Te Apiti wind farm is the first in New Zealand to feed electricity directly into the national electricity grid.^[1] Prior to this, all wind turbines had fed their power into local distribution networks.

The $100 million wind farm consists of 55 separate turbines capable of generating 1.65 MW each, representing a total capacity of 90.75 MW. Each turbine is atop a 70 metre high tower. It is fitted with 3 blades each 35 metres in length.^[1]

The Manawatu Gorge area is ideal for wind farms. The Tararua and Ruahine Ranges 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, another New Zealand electricity generator and retailer, operates a wind farm on the south side of the Manawatu Gorge.

The Te Apiti wind farm is also a carbon offset project, compensating among others the British bank HSBC [1] and the Dutch government [2] for CO2 emissions from flying and electricity use.

As of 2007, installed capacity of wind turbines in New Zealand has reached 321 MW and a further 46.5 MW is under construction.^[2]

1 Virtual Field Trip
2 References
3 See also
4 External links

[edit] 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. ^[3]