Two turbines up, eight to go at Mercury Energy’s new wind farm

Two up, eight to go.

Mercury Energy plans to erect a wind turbine a week for the next eight weeks at its Kaiwera Downs windfarm near Gore, and two are already standing at the site.

Construction at the $115 million wind farm, which will generate enough power for 22,000 homes, remained on schedule to be operational in October, just a year after work at the site began.

The erection of the blades and the components occurs as the wind and the weather windows allow, a Mercury spokesperson said.

“A range of contractors have been involved, both local and imported, and due to the specialised nature of wind farm construction we have a range of people from all over the world helping us with their expertise,’’ the spokesperson said.

“So far we have logged over 110,000 work hours to the end of June, shifted 170,000 m3 of rock and earth, poured 7000 tonnes of concrete, used 440 tonnes of reinforcing, built six and a half kilometres of roading, installed 6500m of cabling, constructed 18km of overhead transmission lines to the Gore substation and transported 90 turbine components from Bluff to Kaiwera.

The turbines were manufactured by Vestas and rated at 4.3MW each.

The towers were 77 metres high and the blades 67 metres long, the longest in New Zealand, giving a total tip height of 145 m.

“A turbine is made up of three tower sections, plus the nacelle, hub and gear box and three blades which are all safely trucked up from South Port,’’ he said.

“We’re on schedule to be operational by October 2023.’’