April 3, 2007
New Zealand
New Zealand
There may be 11 wind farm proposals in the South, but only a few of them will reach fruition, an industry player says.
TrustPower’s announced intention to build a wind farm on hills called Kaiwera Downs, between Clinton and Mataura, brings known wind farm proposals to 11 in the Otago-Southland area. This includes the alreadystarted White Hill farm at Mossburn.
If all are approved and developed, their output would pump more than 1000MW of power into the national grid.
The chances of all of them being built were remote, according to TrustPower community relations manager Graeme Purches.
“There is what we call a lot of prospecting going on. At the end of the day, only a few of them are ever going to get off the ground,” Mr Purches said.
“There are a lot of people sticking up wind monitors but some of these proposals are never going to make it.”
He declined to say which projects he had doubts about but said many had problems such as visual pollution and transmission line access. TrustPower had three concrete wind farm proposals an upgrade of its Tararua wind farm near Palmerston North, a 200MW farm near Lake Mahinerangi and the 240MW Kaiwera Downs farm between Clinton and Mataura.
By Steve Hepburn
4 April 2007
URL to article: https://www.wind-watch.org/news/2007/04/03/wind-farm-fruition-doubted/