The wind farm would be a part of the country not normally associated with wind generation. Photo:
Electricity generator Manawa Energy is looking at building a wind farm in the central North Island, between Taihape and Waiouru.
It has secured the rights to develop the site on private farmland with good wind and the potential to power about 100,000 households.
Manawa Energy's general manager of new developments Clayton Delmarter said it was in a part of the country not normally associated with wind generation but the company wanted diversity in its developments and the site had a lot of advantages.
"Finding a project like that has all the right attributes across transmission, resource, communities, stakeholders including DOC [Department of Conservation] and iwi, is actually quite challenging, so it is another wind farm but there's a relatively small pool of sites in the right parts of the country that can be delivered at the scale of this project."
The rights to the site were originally held by Meridian, which had looked at a 52 turbine windfarm.
Delmarter said it would likely take at least two or three years to go through the necessary process of investigating, consenting, and designing the project to get to the point where Manawa would be in a position to make a final decision on whether to proceed.
He said after that it would take another two or three years to build.
Manawa's chief executive, David Prentice, said the project was consistent with the company's strategy of developing renewable energy projects, which the country would increasingly need to reduce emissions.
However, he repeated criticism that the government's move to do further study on the Lake Onslow proposal in the South Island, to provide dry year storage, was getting in the way of power companies making decisions on renewable projects.
"The most recent reports have said that the original estimate for construction has ballooned from about $4 billion to $16b, and even at $4b we thought that was the wrong solution to the wrong problem ... it's the wrong thing to do and should be stopped."