Two Wind Farms Get NZ Closer to 90% Green

Two huge wind farm approvals totaling 1,400 MW (1.4 GW) bring New Zealand closer to its target of 90% renewable electricity by 2025. The small nation of four million gets more than three quarters of its electricity from clean energy already: 79%.

Geothermal and hydropower have long supplied the majority of New Zealand’s power, but hydro is at a natural limit. Wind is well positioned to fill the gap, according to Wind Energy Association CEO Eric Pyle. ”Wind power could generate 20% of New Zealand’s electricity by 2025, up from 4% today.”

That means growing wind from its current 615 MW to around 3,000MW. These two approvals are a significant step forward, supplying nearly half of that at a total of 1,400 MW. The two large utility-scale wind farms are rated at 860 MW and 540 MW. (Another huge farm in the coal-rich South Island was denied, Meridian Energy is fighting to overturn a decision against its 630 MW Project Hayes in Otago.)

860 MW Genesis Energy

Genesis Energy has just been granted the resource consents to build an 858 MW wind farm in a remote region of the Wairarapa, at the bottom of the North Island, but near to Wellington, one of New Zealand’s four main population centers.

The 286 turbines, with a maximum height of 155 meters are proposed for a remote area that is relatively sparsely populated, with just six small rural settlements in or around the remote coastal site, with a combined population of about 500 in just 110 households.

Like US wind farms in Iowa and Texas, the company has signed land use agreements with 27 owners of the land, and would site the turbines within a “turbine corridor” ideal for wind farm development. Over several years, building the farm is expected to cost around $1.68 billion NZ (US$1.43)

540 MW Contact Energy

Contact Energy, New Zealand’s largest utility has resource consent to build Hauauru ma raki (“northwest wind” in Maori) a 504 MW, 168-turbine wind farm near New Zealand’s largest population center of Auckland, with the farm sited on the windy west coast between Port Waikato and Raglan.

Among the conditions imposed on Hauauru ma raki under the consent are that the turbines must not be taller than 150 metres with a maximum of three, 50-metre blades, which must be light grey or off-white in colour with low reflectivity, and limits for noise created during both the construction and operation of the wind farm, and a number of conditions to protect the local ecology.

At the time, the approval made it the biggest wind project in the country to secure consent to date, but Contact Energy appears to be wavering on going forward with the project immediately. Certainly it is a gigantic step.

Both farms approved are twice the size of New Zealand’s biggest wind farm to date, West Wind, which has only 62 turbines that are less than half the height of the new turbines, at only 67 meters tall.

View the original article here

Wind farms

Recently we explain things on wind energy in this blog. It was necessary that a blog about renewable energy was here. But often tends to be that when we talk about something, that need to investigate and discover, becomes another topic more. And because I myself I asked where was this precious energy of the future, I decided to talk about parks wind.

Let us remember that wind power is all that obtained from wind and is transformed into forms useful for activities human.

Wind energy He is obtained by wind turbines. These are some generators, which are driven by a turbine which in turn is driven by the wind . They use a system similar to its predecessors, the windmills. They are so similar to the latter, at a general level and vulgar terms often call these windmills.These generators are considered to be a source of clean energy, renewable, that energy production do not require a combustion which produces polluting waste. Thus we can say that a wind park does not contaminate the environment, becoming the means of energy production more clean has discovered the man.As we have said before, a wind farm can be the means of energy production more clean that it exists. But we have not made it clear they are wind farms. These are a set of wind turbine that transforms wind power into electricity .Wind farms are often built in open spaces, both on land surfaces and in the water. It is more common to find them on Earth, but it seems that in recent years it has popularized the build them in the sea, supposedly because the sea floor will not be as expensive as the of land.To build a wind park, are very account different features existing soil and the environment. It is usually a time period important to take steps which makes it conducive to build a wind park, takes into account the direction and power of the wind.In spite of all this is beginning to have a wind farm in the sea is much more efficient. Here is the link to an interesting article where carefully explains how builds a wind farm in the sea.

If look at general level the situation in Europe . We can say that the biggest investors in wind farms are: Germany, Scotland, Spain and Portugal. Germany has the largest number of wind parks in the world, it shows that they know investing in renewable.Spain, little by little becomes a big gap in this field which has big future. It has 11.615 MW of installed wind power which represents 9% of total demand.Humans do not have a limit set, that is something inexplicable but existing, we have no course and much less a Cap. We move forward, and this will supposedly be the century of renewable.Been long consumiente many exhaustible resources, and that is something that has to inevitably jigsaw in society. It is something of life or death.This type of renewable energy field, you will find one such as wind, very clean and inexhaustible. Only recoup a large investment, which in future will become the only make energy. Change towards clean energy is unavoidable, primarily because the earth itself will never leave that end up with it, through resources limited.

Sources:

Wikipedia

images:

Google images

View the original article here