{"id":552549,"date":"2026-07-31T06:27:09","date_gmt":"2026-07-31T06:27:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/552549\/"},"modified":"2026-07-31T06:27:09","modified_gmt":"2026-07-31T06:27:09","slug":"meridian-wins-consent-to-rebuild-te-rere-wind-farm-in-manawatu","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/552549\/","title":{"rendered":"Meridian wins consent to rebuild Te Rere Wind Farm in Manawat\u016b"},"content":{"rendered":"Te Rere was the key driver behind Meridian\u2019s acquisition of NZ Windfarms in 2025.<\/p>\n
As it stands, the farm near Palmerston North on the Tararua Ranges has 91 small turbines with generation capacity of 45.5 megawatts (MW).<\/p>\n
When approved, the repowering project will involve the construction and operation of up to 40 new turbines, with generation capacity of up to 172MW.<\/p>\n
It is New Zealand\u2019s first wind farm repowering project and is expected to generate seven times the annual energy production of the existing wind farm, Meridian said.<\/p>\n
A final investment decision is expected from the Meridian board in early 2027, but work is already underway on upgrading access roads to the site.<\/p>\n
\u201cGetting this work underway ahead of a final investment decision means we can get off to a flying start, compressing our construction timeline and getting these megawatts into the energy system as soon as we possibly can,\u201d Roan said.<\/p>\n
The first stage of Te Rere Hau was built in 2006.<\/p>\n
Earlier this week, the company received consent to build a 110MW solar farm near Morrinsville.<\/p>\n
The solar farm is one of a number of projects in Meridian\u2019s development pipeline.<\/p>\n
The 134ha site is 2km east of Morrinsville and 600m south of the Piako substation, where the solar farm would connect to the national grid.<\/p>\n
The consent also allows for electricity storage in the future through a distributed battery energy storage system.<\/p>\n
The company plans to invest about $3 billion through to 2030 to add more new renewable energy projects.<\/p>\n
The project is also subject to a final investment decision by the Meridian board.<\/p>\n
If approved, construction could begin in 2028 and take about two years to build, the company said.<\/p>\n
Jamie Gray is an Auckland-based journalist, covering the financial markets, the primary sector and energy. He joined the Herald in 2011.<\/p>\n
Stay ahead with the latest market moves, corporate updates, and economic insights by subscribing to our\u00a0Business newsletter<\/a>\u00a0\u2013 your essential weekly round-up of all the business news you need.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Te Rere was the key driver behind Meridian\u2019s acquisition of NZ Windfarms in 2025. As it stands, the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":552550,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[10791,138,2199,8996,5205,1667,3233,71,58630,78,10509,68596,111,139,529,69,6292,17152,19764,103805,8690,61,10000,6202],"class_list":["post-552549","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business","tag-ageing","tag-business","tag-city","tag-consent","tag-council","tag-energy","tag-farm","tag-from","tag-goahead","tag-in","tag-manawat","tag-meridian","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-north","tag-nz","tag-palmerston","tag-rebuild","tag-received","tag-rere","tag-te","tag-to","tag-wind","tag-wins"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/552549","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=552549"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/552549\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/552550"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=552549"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=552549"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=552549"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}