New wind farm could power 210,000 EVs

Mercury’s yellow stood out as energy minister Dr Megan Woods and others used yellow spades to mark the construction start at Mercury’s Turitea wind farm in the Tararua Ranges near Palmerston North.

The 119MW Turitea wind farm will start sending power to the national grid at the end of next year, producing enough renewable electricity for 210,000 EVs (about 470GWh per annum on average).

The ceremony on October 29 celebrated the start on foundations for the first 33 of 60 consented wind turbines at Turitea.

Mercury chief executive Fraser Whineray says the Turitea wind farm will contribute to New Zealand’s sustainable, low emissions future by making more renewable electricity available for homes, businesses and electric vehicles around the country.

“We are pleased to welcome minister Woods to this very windy part of the Manawatu, and to help celebrate this milestone with us and the community,” he says.

Mercury will make an initial investment of $256 million for the first 33 of 60 consented wind turbines at Turitea and transmission infrastructure for the whole site.

Further wind energy development is consented for the other 27 turbines at Turitea and the proposed 53 turbines at nearby Puketoi, giving a total potential investment by the company of around $1 billion in wind energy in this area.

This is similar to Mercury’s investment in geothermal power generation in the 2000s, which helped displace significant amounts of thermal (gas and coal) generation.

“Mercury began to explore a strategy of adding wind generation to our portfolio of renewable generation assets nearly 15 years ago,” Whineray says.

“We’ve come a long way since then, and we’d like to acknowledge and thank local iwi, councils and landowners for their work with us as we progress this development.”