Source: Radio New Zealand
Chatham Islands Enterprise Trust chair Hamish Chisholm expects the power prices will start to drop soon. Ajay Peni Ataera / First Dawn Productions
A new wind farm makes it possible for the diesel-reliant Chatham Islands to go green and run entirely on renewable energy.
Locals hope it will slash astronomically high power prices with some saying the costs are deterring others from moving there.
The three new wind turbines at the Point Durham wind farm can generate more energy than the current peak demand.
The power price is expected to drop by more than 20 percent to about 89 cents per kiloWatt hour.
Currently, diesel fuels the power supply on the Chatham Islands, but it is costly and vulnerable to supply chain issues with an ageing ship and price fluctuations.
Hotel Chatham owner operator Toni Croon said the current exorbitant power prices limited growth.
Her monthly power bill for the hotel was roughly $13,000, she said.
“It’s just horrendous. Horrendous as a business owner, horrendous for anyone on this island. It’s survival of the fittest and we basically just live in debt because of our power prices,” Croon said.
The Port Durham wind farm is designed to give the Chatham Islands a more stable and reliable electricity supply. Supplied
She could not wait to be less reliant on diesel, saying the wind farm would be good for the environment and their wallets.
“It’s going to be everything. Even your family steals fuel off you because when times get tough, when there’s no fuel, you’ve got every bottle, everything filled up that you possibly can,” she said.
“This is going to be a game changer to every business and not have to rely on the ship.”
A previous wind turbine project fell over more than a decade ago after hitting financial difficulties.
She hoped this one would not be a lot of hot air and would make a sizeable difference to their bills.
If it did, she expected the Chathams would grow.
“I can think of five businesses that I’d like to start with the power prices being a lot more reasonable,” she said.
“People will move here for a start. No one will move here [currently]. Most households are $1000 to $1200 [a month]. That’s no hot water, just absolutely ridiculous, so we’ll get growth in the population.”
The mayor of the Chatham Islands, Greg Horler, said the cost of living – including power bills – hit hard on the Chathams.
“People are struggling on the mainland. People here [have] to do the same thing, they’ve got to slap another 30 percent on so if you’re struggling on the mainland, smack another 30 percent on and that’s how they struggle over here. It’s actually quite tough,” he said.
Locals were looking forward to a greener, cheaper and more stable energy source and opportunities for growth, he said.
In 2023, a $10 million government grant was earmarked to develop a renewable energy system.
Chatham Islands Enterprise Trust led the charge for the wind farm, and added a further million dollars to the pot.
Construction at the Port Durham wind farm, which will be officially opened on Thursday. Supplied
Trust chair Hamish Chisholm said they were looking forward to a more reliable, sustainable power supply that would reduce the cost of living and doing business.
“We’ve only got limited capacity for storage on the island and we’ve had a couple of shipping outages in recent years so that’s brought us pretty close to the lights going off,” he said.
He hoped that cutting the tariff price would help to encourage businesses to invest more.
There was a lot of fishing done around the Chathams but he said the current cost of electricity meant it was mostly too expensive to process them there.
“With lower electricity prices, we’d hope that that would open up the range of fish species that could be processed here on the island viably and then that sort of just helps grow our economy from there,” Chisholm said.
The 225 kilowatt turbines generate power when wind speeds hit between 12 and 90 kilometres an hour.
A new grid balancing plant means the diesel generators can shut down when the turbines are covering the island’s demand and a battery can provide an hour of peak power load if wind speeds fluctuate.
Diesel burn would be reduced by the equivalent of 500,000 litres per year with carbon emissions dropping by around 1300 tonnes a year, he said.
The system also allowed for new renewable energy supplies to be added to the grid in the future, which would bring the costs down further, he said.
He expected the prices would start to drop soon.
“It had been feeding into the grid. There’s been days when the power station has been completely silent which isn’t something that’s been heard down here probably for 20 or 30 years,” he said.
The Point Durham wind farm will be officially opened on Thursday.
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– Published by EveningReport.nz and AsiaPacificReport.nz, see: MIL OSI in partnership with Radio New Zealand
