Te Āpiti is a 55-turbine wind farm located north of the Manawatū Gorge. Te Āpiti was the first wind farm Meridian built in New Zealand. It’s also the first wind farm to supply electricity into the national energy grid.
The wind farm can generate up to 90.75 megawatts of electricity – enough for around 30,000 average New Zealand homes.
Construction began in 2003 and Te Āpiti became fully operational in 2004. The wind farm can be seen from the Manawatū Gorge walking track. This remarkable gorge is one of the few in the world where a river crosses a mountain range.
Te Āpiti is located on 1,150 hectares of farmland owned by four separate landowners, including Meridian.
The wind near the Manawatū Gorge is exceptional, even by international standards. The strong, unimpeded winds from the Tasman Sea and the funnel effect of the Manawatū Gorge make this the perfect place for a wind farm.
Meridian built 21 kilometres of road to transport the turbine parts to the wind farm and excavated 55 foundations for the turbines. A 400-tonne crawler crane was used to install them.
It gets pretty blustery in New Zealand – which is good news for us wind farmers. We have six 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 asset 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.