More Turbines Planned for SI
By WILLIAMS, David
TrustPower has released details of a second major windfarm planned for the lower South Island.
Environment Southland and the Gore District Council yesterday confirmed they had received an application from the company for a $440 million wind farm, with 83 turbines, each 145m high, at Kaiwera Downs, near Gore.
That follows consent being granted for its $400m wind farm north of Lake Mahinerangi, 50km west of Dunedin. The decision to grant consent has been appealed to the Environment Court.
TrustPower chief executive Keith Tempest said the proposed Kaiwera Downs wind farm would be built in stages on 2568ha of privately owned farmland. The company had agreement from the landowners to build the project.
Once built, the total capacity would be up to 240MW of power — 40MW more than its Mahinerangi proposal — supplying the equivalent of 113,000 homes.
However, it is significantly smaller than Project Hayes, Meridian’s 176-turbine windfarm granted resource consent by the Central Otago District Council and the Otago Regional Council last month.
Tempest said the latest proposal was “another stage in TrustPower’s ongoing development of sustainable generation”, and would be built close to demand and use existing transmission lines.
He estimated it would bring in more than $50 million to the local community.
The wind farm will require a transmission line of either 3.6km or 4.1km to connect to existing Transpower 220kv transmission lines.
Gore District Council planning consultant Keith Hovell, of Dunedin, said he had received the application and it would be publicly notified on November 17.
The public would have until December 17 to make submissions, he said.
A hearing should be held at the end of March or early April.
Environment Southland consents manager John Engel said the Gore District Council would take the lead on the matter, as it was dealing with the land-use consents.
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