Te Uku Wind Farm

Story

Te Uku Wind Farm is a wind farm at Te Uku near Raglan, New Zealand. It has a capacity of 64MW using 28 wind turbines. Construction was completed in March 2011, at a cost of $200 million. The farm covers an area of approximately 200ha. The wind farm is jointly owned by WEL Networks and Meridian Energy.Resource consent was granted in May 2008 and appeals were resolved by November 2008. Construction of the wind farm began in 2010. Hick Bros Civil and Spartan Construction won an award for outstanding technical and environmental planning. The wind farm was officially opened by the Prime Minister in February 2011. Te Uku was fully operational on 10 March 2011.Te Uku Windfarm is controlled from Wellington where Meridian has its control center for running all there New Zealand Hydro and Wind generation assets.The windfarm is linked to the national grid's Te Kowhai substation by about 17km of 33kv lines on 159 steel poles built on concrete pile foundations and an underground cable from just west of Waitetuna Valley Rd to Cogswell Rd, a total of about 25km.ConstructionEach 130.5 m. high, 318 tonne, turbine took 2 or 3 days to build using 4 cranes, the largest a 600 tonne KR Wind/NZ Crane Group Alliance crane. Towers were formed in 3 sections (made in Korea), and topped by Siemens components (as at Makara) - a 3.5 m circumference, 81 tonne nacelle, hub and 3 turbine blades. Barge transport was considered, but rejected in favour of road transporters running from September 2010 to January 2011.