We’re building New Zealand’s largest wind farm.
More wonderful, renewable, kiwi-made electricity will soon be available for homes, businesses and vehicles throughout the country. It’s all part of our long-term mission to create energy freedom and help build New Zealand’s sustainable, low-emissions future.
Experience a bird’s-eye view of the Turitea wind farm, located above the Manawatū.
The Tararua Ranges are the ideal place to harness the strong winds that come in from the west, and Mercury has been working with communities in this area for more than 15 years to realise its wind generation potential.
Power will start to flow from Turitea next summer.
The Turitea wind farm is located in the Tararua Ranges near Palmerston North, in the Manawatū-Whanganui region.
The Puketoi Range to the east (past Pahiatua) is the site of another fully consented 53-turbine wind farm. Transmission assets currently being built for Turitea are scaled to also support future generation transmission from Puketoi.
We believe our sites at Turitea and Puketoi represent some of the best consented renewable generation opportunities available in New Zealand, and we’re excited to bring this wonderful energy to homes and businesses across the country.
The wind farm at Turitea, together with the potential development at nearby Puketoi, represent an investment of more than $1 billion. That’s a similar amount to the investment we made during our development of geothermal generation in the decade to 2013.
Take a look behind the sleek white surface of a wind turbine and discover the technology it uses to create electricity from the wind’s natural energy.
We're pretty excited about our shiny new turbines! Did you know...
60 turbines to be installed initially
840 GWh generation per year
125 metres from base to rotor tip
We have 5 geothermal stations across the central North Island. Base-load geothermal runs at full capacity about 95% of the time.
We have 9 hydro stations on the Waikato River. These stations harness the power of water to generate approximately 10% of NZ's annual energy supply.
Our solar farm and R+D Centre sits on the site of the former gas-fired Southdown power station to help us learn more about this energy source. Plus we've got great solar offers for customers.
We’ve started building our first wind farm at Turitea (just outside of Palmerston North), as we work towards New Zealand’s even more sustainable future.