Construction has begun on a $300 million solar farm by Christchurch Airport.
Officials, including Energy Minister Simeon Brown, marked the milestone with a sod-turning ceremony on Tuesday morning.
The airport partnered with Contact Energy and international solar developer Lightsource bp to develop the solar farm, which would span 230ha on land just beyond the runways.
It would hold about 300,000 solar panels, and was expected to generate enough renewable energy to power close to 36,000 homes.
Contact Energy chief executive Mike Fuge said once completed, the 162-megawatt (MW) solar farm would be the largest in the country.
“This is a big day for us because it’s a new technology for us getting into solar.
“The total project is in the order of about $300 million. It’s a chunky investment and we’ve got a lot of banking partners with us as well.”
Christchurch Airport chief executive Justin Watson said the solar farm would provide a large amount of green energy to help the aviation industry shift away from fossil fuels.
“Ultimately, aviation needs to decarbonise. No one knows quite what form that will take – whether it will be electric or hydrogen or sustainable aviation fuels – but what people know is you’re going to need a lot of green energy.
“So for us to have that available here, when the technology catches up we’ll be able to generate that here on site.
“We currently use about 8MW at our peak use. We’ve forecast out to 2040 that if we have transition in aircraft to next generation [using renewable fuels], we’re going to need about 140MW… so we believe if we were to electrify or transition to hydrogen we would have enough from the solar farm to provide that for aviation.”
Watson said the solar panels were designed to observe the sunlight rather than reflect it, so they would not cause disruption for planes landing at the airport.
The solar farm was the first phase of the airport’s renewable energy project, Kōwhai Park.
The park was nestled between Orion’s lines network that supplied the city and Transpower’s national grid pylons.
Brown said the solar farm was a major investment in renewable energy in Christchurch, and he wanted to see that countrywide.
The coalition government this week announced a multi-pronged plan to deal with what it was calling an energy security crisis, including a review of the electricity market.
“We need to double the amount of renewable energy that New Zealand needs over the next 25 years out to 2050.
“That’s what our plan is about delivering and that’s what we announced the framework for yesterday; how can we make it quicker, easier and cheaper to be able to build energy in New Zealand, whether it’s wind, solar geothermal, hydro?
“Fast-track consents are all going to play a critical role in getting that enabled here,” Brown said.
“I guess our message to the energy sector is we need far more of this investment, and we want to see more of it right across our country.”
The government also announced plans to pass legislation by the end of the year to reverse the oil and gas exploration ban and remove regulatory barriers to the construction of facilities to import Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG).
Construction of the solar farm was expected to take 18 months to two years.
