Powering across the Tasman

By CHRIS DANIELS

Trustpower, the Tauranga-based power company, has got planning permission to build a new windfarm near Adelaide, South Australia.

The windfarm will have an output of 32 megawatts, generated from 20 turbines. Trustpower says this will generate power for up to 17,000 average homes and displace up to 112,000 tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions a year, which would otherwise be produced by fossil fuel generation.

Trustpower owns and operates the biggest windfarm in Australia and New Zealand, the Tararua windfarm near Palmerston North.

It is currently doubling the size of its Tararua farm, taking it from a 32 megawatt generator to 68MW.

The first of its new turbines is due to start delivering power next month, with the last due to be installed in May next year, taking the farm from 48 turbines to 103.

Company chief executive Keith Tempest said the next step in the process of setting up the South Australia windfarm would come early next year, when the Trustpower board would further consider the project.

It had already been under development for more than two years, with the planning application being "called in" and formally declared a "major project" by the South Australian Government.

Trustpower is the latest of several New Zealand power companies slowly expanding into Australian electricity generation.

State owned enterprise Meridian Energy is at the forefront of New Zealand investment across the Tasman. Its chief executive, Keith Turner, said in June that the company was planning to invest up to A$600 million ($676 million) in Australian wind projects over five years.

This investment was dependent on an Australian Government scheme designed to encourage new renewable energy.

In March, Meridian spent $640 million buying 10 hydro stations in Victoria. In 2001 it bought five smaller hydro stations in New South Wales and Victoria for about $100 million.

Meridian chief executive Turner told an Australian newspaper earlier this year that the company was "not here [in Australia] to dabble, we're a serious player".

Contact Energy, the largest private sector power company in New Zealand and the largest retailer, owns 25 per cent of the Oakey power station, a 342MW coal-fired station near Brisbane.

It also owns 40 per cent of the 300MW Valley Power station near Melbourne.