New Zealand’s Environment Court has made a positive recommendation to Conservation Minister, Tim Groser, on a proposal from Crest Energy to generate electricity from Kaipara Harbour.

Kaipara Harbour is New Zealand’s largest harbour and is on the west coast just north of Auckland. The project would be the first in New Zealand using tidal flow to generate electricity.

Crest Energy is seeking to build a 200-megawatt tidal power plant at the mouth of the harbour. The system could be generating power by next year with Phase One of the project producing 20MW from an initial installation of 20 turbines. 

Eventually, the power plant would have 200 turbines and could provide up to 4 per cent of the country’s power.

Each turbine would be 24 metres high but would be 6 metres under water at low tide. About 8000 million cubic metres of water pass in and out of the harbour each day, and Crest Energy says Kaipara Harbour is one of the best sites in the world to generate substantial amounts of tidal electricity.

The Environment Court said that the Crest Energy proposal still needed further work to satisfy concerns about the turbines interfering with the critically endangered Maui’s dolphin and the important snapper fishery.

Carnegie Wave Energy has commenced construction of Australia’s first commercial wave energy project.

Stage One of the project involves the deployment of a single stand-alone commercial-scale CETO unit in the Sepia Depression, between Garden Island and Five Fathom Bank off Freemantle, Western Australia. The first facility was initially planned for Albany but Garden Island was chosen instead because the waves in Albany were too small.

Stage One of the project will have a peak capacity of 5 megawatts, generating sufficient power for around 3,500 households. The Project is forecast to create 30 jobs and save over 500,000 tonnes in greenhouse gas emissions.  Implementation of Stage One and detailed cost and design activities associated with Stage Two will be undertaken during 2010 with construction and commissioning of Stage Two scheduled for 2011.

The project will utilise Carnegie’s $12.5 million grant from the Western Australian Government announced earlier this year.

The world’s southernmost wind farm, built by New Zealand’s Meridian Energy, has been opened in Antarctica.

The three turbines will supply about 1 megawatt of electricity to New Zealand’s Scott Base and the American McMurdo Station.

Scott Bennett, project manager with Meridian Energy, says the wind farm will supply about 11% of the power used by the two Antarctic bases and will cut diesel consumption by about 463,000 litres per year.

With only one supply ship a year, the project, which took two years, required meticulous planning. The towers were too big to be shipped in a container and had to be strapped to roof racks fited to an icebreaker.

If the wind farm proves a success it could be followed by others, with solar power generation also being evaluated.

There is one other wind farm in Antarctica, consisting of two turbines installed in 2003 at Australia’s Mawson Base.

Wind turbines above Scott Base
(Public domain photo)