Mill Creek wind farm is located northwest of Wellington near Ōhāriu Valley. Fully operational since 2014, its 26 turbines generate up to 59.8 megawatts of electricity, producing enough electricity for about 34,000 average New Zealand homes.
Mill Creek is located on privately owned farms. The landowners chose wind farming because it would preserve the area’s environment, lifestyle and rural character better than other development options such as a major housing subdivision or forestry. They selected Meridian to develop and operate the wind farm because of our experience with developing wind energy in New Zealand.
The Mill Creek wind farm has all the features we look for in a wind farm, mainly consistently strong wind.
The construction of the 26 turbines on the hills required approximately 800,000 cubic metres of earthworks and the construction of 19 kilometres of access tracks within the site.
It gets pretty blustery in New Zealand – which is good news for us wind farmers. We have five wind farms spread from Waikato to Southland, plus the iconic, solitary wind turbine in Brooklyn, Wellington. We’ve also designed and built a wind farm at Ross Island in Antarctica that provides power to Scott Base and McMurdo research stations.
If you’d like more information on one of our wind farms, please email community@meridianenergy.co.nz.
Our Power Up community fund supports local projects in areas in which we have generation assets. It’s one of the ways in which we recognise the importance of local communities to our operations.
If you’re based near a Meridian power station or wind farm and have a project you’d like help with, apply now!
We reckon that by teaching Kiwi kids how we make clean energy, they’ll continue the mahi to keep Papatūānuku in good shape for our future. That’s why we’ve come up with some downloadable education resources that are aligned with the New Zealand school curriculum and have been designed and reviewed by New Zealand teachers.