Construction of New Zealand's first large scale grid battery storage system has finished in Ruakākā, just south of Whangārei.
The Meridian Energy project has storage capacity of 200 megawatt-hours, which is enough to power 60 thousand homes for two hours.
It will provide greater resilience and reduce strain to the Northland power and reduce strain on the wider power supply.
Guy Waipara, Meridian Energy General Manager Development, told Kerre Woodham the batteries are designed to be available at peak periods for the network.
He says it’s only part of the system, but it will play a really important part at the times where energy security is challenged.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:06):
You're listening to the Kerrywood and Mornings podcast from NEWSTALKSTB.
Speaker 2 (00:11):
You'll recall that Transpars warned of higher risks of electricity
outages starting in the winter of twenty twenty six. Next year.
The National Grid Operator's draft Security of Supply Assessment predicts
an elevated risk of shortages will arrive four years earlier
than thought. As recently as a year ago, it found solar,
(00:31):
wind and battery storage isn't coming online fast enough to
make up for dwindling supplies in the country's gas fields. Previously,
transpar thought its lower security standard would be met until
twenty thirty. Now it says it will be breached in
twenty twenty six, much earlier than expected. While to counter that,
Meridian Energies open New Zealand's first large scale grid battery
(00:54):
storage system in Ruakaka, just south of fanga A. The
battery farm is a significant step towards strengthening Northland's electricity
resilience and supporting the region shift renewable energy. Meridians General
manager of Development, Guy waype it It joins me. Now
very good morning to you Morenauri Morena. It's indig transpowers
(01:18):
going help. We need you guys to be doing more
and more of it. Is this going to help considerably?
A bit.
Speaker 3 (01:27):
May absolutely, one hundred megawatts is a material amount of
power available. And the way these batteries work is they're
designed to be available at those times of peak stress
on the on the entire network, so it will be
there to do its thing. You know, it's only part
of the system, but it will do it really play
a really important part at those times when security gets
(01:47):
sometimes challenged in winter, particularly so.
Speaker 2 (01:50):
Where does the energy come from and how long can
it be stored?
Speaker 3 (01:55):
So batteries obviously don't generate their own power, so they
you charge them up pretty much what you think of
your electric vehicle owner. You charge them up overnight, typically
when power is more abundant and relatively cheap, and then
you hold that and you you can you can put
that into the network during the times when the network
(02:16):
is that it's peak, and that's typically first thing in
the morning when people get up put on their heaters
and have breakfast, and also in the evening when they
return home from work and cook dinner and again put
the heaters on in winter, so those are the times
when the battery will be.
Speaker 2 (02:31):
Doing its job and only in winter.
Speaker 3 (02:37):
Will be operating right through the air. You know, there's
every you know, every day some whether there be summer, winter,
you know, the system has peaks and the battery will
will operate daily. It'll be charging out night and charging
during those peak times during the day.
Speaker 2 (02:52):
Would they have been able to prevent the blackouts caused
when the pylon's all.
Speaker 3 (02:58):
Over I've have been asked this question. I think that
scenario it was quite extreme, So I don't think our
facility would have prevented a blankout occurring in Northland, But
having those resources available locally would have meant putting the
system back together again would have been made a lot
more simple. Having local generation available to be dispatched and
(03:22):
the battery it doesn't have to operate it at its peak,
creating it would have been able to put a lower
amount of energy into that region for a much longer
period of time. So if you're putting together powered hospitals
and other areas of key parts of infrastructure, then the
battery and the solar plant, which we've still started building
(03:42):
would have really helped.
Speaker 2 (03:45):
So are you just looking at Northland or are you
looking at other aspects, Other parts of New Zealand as well.
Speaker 3 (03:53):
We have projects all around the country and so we've
just started the solar farm right next to Rourkaka. We
have a solar farm that we're moving towards construction under
a venture arrangement with Nova and that's around Topor Yep,
we've got we've got a win farm in the one
(04:13):
or two that we are moving towards an investment decision
towards the end of this year, so and darts card's
pretty full. And then next year we've got a similar
number of projects all moving towards boardswards starting.
Speaker 2 (04:28):
Which is going towards that supply becoming more reliable, which
is what Transpower is hoping for. And for every one
of these renewables that you're building that you're developing, do
you need the same battery park next door to store
that battery with that power when you don't need it?
Speaker 3 (04:47):
No, not necessarily. It's just a really efficient way of
connecting two assets for the kind of cost of one.
You know, if you've plumbed your facility international grid through
a connection point, if you can do solar and a
battery through the same route, it saves you the cost
of doing that twice. So that's why we're thinking of
this energy part concept and a lot of our solar
(05:07):
and wind farms, the new ones anyway, we are thinking about,
you know, putting them side by side.
Speaker 2 (05:12):
It does make so much sense. But do the consenting
offices understand the sense behind it.
Speaker 3 (05:20):
Yeah, we actually got the consent for the battery relatively quickly,
the solar farm to a lot longer. But yeah, I
think a lot of it's not unique. Other people are
thinking about the same idea, which is, you know, multi
purpose but connections that keeps things simple and really efficient,
which keeps the cost down, which is hugely important for consumers.
Speaker 2 (05:41):
I've seen images of the solar panels in farms with
the sheep grazing under them and keeping the grass down
in that. Whilst not uclic, I mean it's it's certainly
not ugly. I don't understand people's obsession with the aesthetics
of wind farms or solar the battery parks, they're not
they're more utilitarian. I get that they're just they're just
(06:03):
batteries out in the field. But what are people subjections
to having solar or wind farms.
Speaker 3 (06:11):
Oh, there's a range of reasons. Sometimes that the solar
farms have been built over land that has other uses.
So there's some people have a view that lands should
be used for other things, other purposes. There's a visual aspect.
Those are the kind of main to it's mostly land
use and visual aesthetics.
Speaker 2 (06:32):
I mean, we need power. That's that's unless we want
to go back to us kind of subsistence livelihood. And
I don't think many of us want that. And it
has to happen.
Speaker 3 (06:45):
Yes, it does, Yes, that's the trade often. You know,
I personally think wind farms look amazing, But.
Speaker 2 (06:50):
I like wind farms too. I've choppered around them and
I think they look fantastic. How many more do you
need to build to be secure in your basically in
terms of the provision of power that we're all going
to need. You're not the only company building them, obviously
you're part of a interoperative. But are you at capacity
(07:13):
in terms of what you can build?
Speaker 1 (07:15):
No?
Speaker 3 (07:15):
I don't know, we are we if you've kind to
step back and think about the national context. By twenty fifty,
most people who think about the future in the detailed
way think the electricity system roughly needs to double its
capacity and to electrify a lot of things that run
on fossil fuels, like you know, your cars, attructs, your planes,
(07:37):
et cetera. Plus a lot of businesses that rely on
fossil fuels for process heat, burning coal for the process heed,
et cetera. So once you layer all of those other
areas of commerce into the electricity system, and then you
add population growth on top of that, then roughly we're
looking at doubling the system by twenty fifty. So that's
(07:58):
a big number. So if you're going to work backwards,
we have resolved that we need to be doing something
substantial and you every year until you know, until until
twenty fifty. So this decade alone, we you know, we
we said a target of our sales back and a
couple of years ago did a project a year, So
seven projects in seven years, and look, pleasingly, we were
(08:22):
actually head of that run rate. We might we might
get to twenty thirty and have done nine or ten
rather than seven. So it's a it's a really good
time to be in the ectrocity business because we are
going we are building things.
Speaker 2 (08:36):
So absolutely a textas says what happens to the dead batteries.
Speaker 3 (08:42):
What's the life span. The lifespan of these batteries is
twenty years, and then at the end the material onside
them is inherently valuable, so they get recycled. I think
when we build these near facilities it's probably worth thinking
about them. They'll be there in perpetuity, so the old
ones will be recycled and they would most likely be
(09:05):
replaced with something new. And as a technology, it just
gets better, So probably a much better version of what
we've got now will be what you'll see in twenty
years time.
Speaker 2 (09:14):
Okay, and how much to the batteries cost? There's a
lot of them.
Speaker 3 (09:20):
Yeah, the project came and pleasingly bang on budget. It
was one hundred and eighty six million dollars for this project,
which is a big number. And then we add the
solar farm into that that's around about two thirty So
that's over four hundred million dollar investment. But I'm really
and into that Northern An economy, which is a material number.
Speaker 2 (09:41):
Absolutely do Sorry, I've got loads of questions because I
don't know much about us at all, but will renewable
power ultimately be cheaper than the fossil fuel power? We've
been partially relying on well.
Speaker 3 (09:58):
The good thing is in New Zealand's one of the
few countries in the world where electricity is not subsidized.
Renewables aren't subsidized. So at the moment, the cheapest form
of electricity generation the new stuff is renewables. It's solar,
and it's wind. In cases where there's geosemal, it's geothermal.
So we have you know, we're fortunate in this country
(10:20):
that we're already at a ninety percent renewable energy base.
Our starting point is excellent and for the you know,
for the foreseeable future, there's a lot of renewables to
keep coming in. The remaining question is how do we
really manage the dry year risk problem, which which is
when our hydro backbone, which is still around sixty percent
(10:40):
of energy in the country, when you go through a
dry year, how do you replace the energy that doesn't
come through rain? And that's the that's probably the single point,
you know, that's the tricky point we still need to solve.
Speaker 2 (10:54):
Will we ever see another dam?
Speaker 3 (10:58):
I think so, I think I think before that and
we're doing this and others will be you know, you'll
see hydro operator is looking at all of their reservoirs
across the country and going, can I get another half
a meter out of that or another meter out because
the facility is built, you know, it's the cheapest cost.
The cheapest cost possible of the next version of hydro
(11:19):
is to get a bit more out of what you
currently have.
Speaker 2 (11:22):
Yep, that makes sense. But you don't think it's beyond
the realms of possibility that another dam is built.
Speaker 3 (11:31):
Yeah, well, nothing's impossible. It's historically been really tricky to
consent your hydro schemes because they do have an ecological
impact when you're flooding a large area and mostly where
these are situated is in parts of the country where
there's you know, where there is outstanding ecology. So that's
that's the tricky part, which is why I kind of
(11:53):
come back to. If you've already got a hydro system
in place, and you know the work has been done,
then the first protocol is to get a bit more
of what you've got, and then if you add those
up little by little, hydro reservoir by hydro reservoir across
the country, it will add up to a reasonable number.
Speaker 2 (12:11):
And just finally, what about the Spanish style blackouts Because
they've been heavily investing in renewables with very little as
a plan B. If you're depending on renewables, is it
possible we'll see a Spanish style blackout.
Speaker 3 (12:32):
I haven't actually gone through that the cause and effect
of that, but that The difference that we have in
New Zealand compared to pretty much all of those European
systems is we have a really really deep and strong
hydro backbone. The hydro backbone we have is our competitive
source of the competitive advantage. The flexibility of how that runs.
(12:54):
It means you can put more wind, more sovereign to
your system and manage the overs and others within that
hydro fleet. So our system has baked a resilience that
a lot of ours don't.
Speaker 2 (13:07):
Brilliant, Guy, thank you so much and thank you for
being so patient answering my questions. Guy Wipro, who's Meridian
Energy General manager of Development, News Talk said, be it
is twelve to eleven.
Speaker 1 (13:18):
For more from Kerry Wood and Mornings, listen live to
News Talks at b from nine am weekdays, or follow
the podcast on iHeartRadio
You're listening to the Kerrywood and Mornings podcast from NEWSTALKSTB.
Speaker 2 (00:11):
You'll recall that Transpars warned of higher risks of electricity
outages starting in the winter of twenty twenty six. Next year.
The National Grid Operator's draft Security of Supply Assessment predicts
an elevated risk of shortages will arrive four years earlier
than thought. As recently as a year ago, it found solar,
(00:31):
wind and battery storage isn't coming online fast enough to
make up for dwindling supplies in the country's gas fields. Previously,
transpar thought its lower security standard would be met until
twenty thirty. Now it says it will be breached in
twenty twenty six, much earlier than expected. While to counter that,
Meridian Energies open New Zealand's first large scale grid battery
(00:54):
storage system in Ruakaka, just south of fanga A. The
battery farm is a significant step towards strengthening Northland's electricity
resilience and supporting the region shift renewable energy. Meridians General
manager of Development, Guy waype it It joins me. Now
very good morning to you Morenauri Morena. It's indig transpowers
(01:18):
going help. We need you guys to be doing more
and more of it. Is this going to help considerably?
A bit.
Speaker 3 (01:27):
May absolutely, one hundred megawatts is a material amount of
power available. And the way these batteries work is they're
designed to be available at those times of peak stress
on the on the entire network, so it will be
there to do its thing. You know, it's only part
of the system, but it will do it really play
a really important part at those times when security gets
(01:47):
sometimes challenged in winter, particularly so.
Speaker 2 (01:50):
Where does the energy come from and how long can
it be stored?
Speaker 3 (01:55):
So batteries obviously don't generate their own power, so they
you charge them up pretty much what you think of
your electric vehicle owner. You charge them up overnight, typically
when power is more abundant and relatively cheap, and then
you hold that and you you can you can put
that into the network during the times when the network
(02:16):
is that it's peak, and that's typically first thing in
the morning when people get up put on their heaters
and have breakfast, and also in the evening when they
return home from work and cook dinner and again put
the heaters on in winter, so those are the times
when the battery will be.
Speaker 2 (02:31):
Doing its job and only in winter.
Speaker 3 (02:37):
Will be operating right through the air. You know, there's
every you know, every day some whether there be summer, winter,
you know, the system has peaks and the battery will
will operate daily. It'll be charging out night and charging
during those peak times during the day.
Speaker 2 (02:52):
Would they have been able to prevent the blackouts caused
when the pylon's all.
Speaker 3 (02:58):
Over I've have been asked this question. I think that
scenario it was quite extreme, So I don't think our
facility would have prevented a blankout occurring in Northland, But
having those resources available locally would have meant putting the
system back together again would have been made a lot
more simple. Having local generation available to be dispatched and
(03:22):
the battery it doesn't have to operate it at its peak,
creating it would have been able to put a lower
amount of energy into that region for a much longer
period of time. So if you're putting together powered hospitals
and other areas of key parts of infrastructure, then the
battery and the solar plant, which we've still started building
(03:42):
would have really helped.
Speaker 2 (03:45):
So are you just looking at Northland or are you
looking at other aspects, Other parts of New Zealand as well.
Speaker 3 (03:53):
We have projects all around the country and so we've
just started the solar farm right next to Rourkaka. We
have a solar farm that we're moving towards construction under
a venture arrangement with Nova and that's around Topor Yep,
we've got we've got a win farm in the one
(04:13):
or two that we are moving towards an investment decision
towards the end of this year, so and darts card's
pretty full. And then next year we've got a similar
number of projects all moving towards boardswards starting.
Speaker 2 (04:28):
Which is going towards that supply becoming more reliable, which
is what Transpower is hoping for. And for every one
of these renewables that you're building that you're developing, do
you need the same battery park next door to store
that battery with that power when you don't need it?
Speaker 3 (04:47):
No, not necessarily. It's just a really efficient way of
connecting two assets for the kind of cost of one.
You know, if you've plumbed your facility international grid through
a connection point, if you can do solar and a
battery through the same route, it saves you the cost
of doing that twice. So that's why we're thinking of
this energy part concept and a lot of our solar
(05:07):
and wind farms, the new ones anyway, we are thinking about,
you know, putting them side by side.
Speaker 2 (05:12):
It does make so much sense. But do the consenting
offices understand the sense behind it.
Speaker 3 (05:20):
Yeah, we actually got the consent for the battery relatively quickly,
the solar farm to a lot longer. But yeah, I
think a lot of it's not unique. Other people are
thinking about the same idea, which is, you know, multi
purpose but connections that keeps things simple and really efficient,
which keeps the cost down, which is hugely important for consumers.
Speaker 2 (05:41):
I've seen images of the solar panels in farms with
the sheep grazing under them and keeping the grass down
in that. Whilst not uclic, I mean it's it's certainly
not ugly. I don't understand people's obsession with the aesthetics
of wind farms or solar the battery parks, they're not
they're more utilitarian. I get that they're just they're just
(06:03):
batteries out in the field. But what are people subjections
to having solar or wind farms.
Speaker 3 (06:11):
Oh, there's a range of reasons. Sometimes that the solar
farms have been built over land that has other uses.
So there's some people have a view that lands should
be used for other things, other purposes. There's a visual aspect.
Those are the kind of main to it's mostly land
use and visual aesthetics.
Speaker 2 (06:32):
I mean, we need power. That's that's unless we want
to go back to us kind of subsistence livelihood. And
I don't think many of us want that. And it
has to happen.
Speaker 3 (06:45):
Yes, it does, Yes, that's the trade often. You know,
I personally think wind farms look amazing, But.
Speaker 2 (06:50):
I like wind farms too. I've choppered around them and
I think they look fantastic. How many more do you
need to build to be secure in your basically in
terms of the provision of power that we're all going
to need. You're not the only company building them, obviously
you're part of a interoperative. But are you at capacity
(07:13):
in terms of what you can build?
Speaker 1 (07:15):
No?
Speaker 3 (07:15):
I don't know, we are we if you've kind to
step back and think about the national context. By twenty fifty,
most people who think about the future in the detailed
way think the electricity system roughly needs to double its
capacity and to electrify a lot of things that run
on fossil fuels, like you know, your cars, attructs, your planes,
(07:37):
et cetera. Plus a lot of businesses that rely on
fossil fuels for process heat, burning coal for the process heed,
et cetera. So once you layer all of those other
areas of commerce into the electricity system, and then you
add population growth on top of that, then roughly we're
looking at doubling the system by twenty fifty. So that's
(07:58):
a big number. So if you're going to work backwards,
we have resolved that we need to be doing something
substantial and you every year until you know, until until
twenty fifty. So this decade alone, we you know, we
we said a target of our sales back and a
couple of years ago did a project a year, So
seven projects in seven years, and look, pleasingly, we were
(08:22):
actually head of that run rate. We might we might
get to twenty thirty and have done nine or ten
rather than seven. So it's a it's a really good
time to be in the ectrocity business because we are
going we are building things.
Speaker 2 (08:36):
So absolutely a textas says what happens to the dead batteries.
Speaker 3 (08:42):
What's the life span. The lifespan of these batteries is
twenty years, and then at the end the material onside
them is inherently valuable, so they get recycled. I think
when we build these near facilities it's probably worth thinking
about them. They'll be there in perpetuity, so the old
ones will be recycled and they would most likely be
(09:05):
replaced with something new. And as a technology, it just
gets better, So probably a much better version of what
we've got now will be what you'll see in twenty
years time.
Speaker 2 (09:14):
Okay, and how much to the batteries cost? There's a
lot of them.
Speaker 3 (09:20):
Yeah, the project came and pleasingly bang on budget. It
was one hundred and eighty six million dollars for this project,
which is a big number. And then we add the
solar farm into that that's around about two thirty So
that's over four hundred million dollar investment. But I'm really
and into that Northern An economy, which is a material number.
Speaker 2 (09:41):
Absolutely do Sorry, I've got loads of questions because I
don't know much about us at all, but will renewable
power ultimately be cheaper than the fossil fuel power? We've
been partially relying on well.
Speaker 3 (09:58):
The good thing is in New Zealand's one of the
few countries in the world where electricity is not subsidized.
Renewables aren't subsidized. So at the moment, the cheapest form
of electricity generation the new stuff is renewables. It's solar,
and it's wind. In cases where there's geosemal, it's geothermal.
So we have you know, we're fortunate in this country
(10:20):
that we're already at a ninety percent renewable energy base.
Our starting point is excellent and for the you know,
for the foreseeable future, there's a lot of renewables to
keep coming in. The remaining question is how do we
really manage the dry year risk problem, which which is
when our hydro backbone, which is still around sixty percent
(10:40):
of energy in the country, when you go through a
dry year, how do you replace the energy that doesn't
come through rain? And that's the that's probably the single point,
you know, that's the tricky point we still need to solve.
Speaker 2 (10:54):
Will we ever see another dam?
Speaker 3 (10:58):
I think so, I think I think before that and
we're doing this and others will be you know, you'll
see hydro operator is looking at all of their reservoirs
across the country and going, can I get another half
a meter out of that or another meter out because
the facility is built, you know, it's the cheapest cost.
The cheapest cost possible of the next version of hydro
(11:19):
is to get a bit more out of what you
currently have.
Speaker 2 (11:22):
Yep, that makes sense. But you don't think it's beyond
the realms of possibility that another dam is built.
Speaker 3 (11:31):
Yeah, well, nothing's impossible. It's historically been really tricky to
consent your hydro schemes because they do have an ecological
impact when you're flooding a large area and mostly where
these are situated is in parts of the country where
there's you know, where there is outstanding ecology. So that's
that's the tricky part, which is why I kind of
(11:53):
come back to. If you've already got a hydro system
in place, and you know the work has been done,
then the first protocol is to get a bit more
of what you've got, and then if you add those
up little by little, hydro reservoir by hydro reservoir across
the country, it will add up to a reasonable number.
Speaker 2 (12:11):
And just finally, what about the Spanish style blackouts Because
they've been heavily investing in renewables with very little as
a plan B. If you're depending on renewables, is it
possible we'll see a Spanish style blackout.
Speaker 3 (12:32):
I haven't actually gone through that the cause and effect
of that, but that The difference that we have in
New Zealand compared to pretty much all of those European
systems is we have a really really deep and strong
hydro backbone. The hydro backbone we have is our competitive
source of the competitive advantage. The flexibility of how that runs.
(12:54):
It means you can put more wind, more sovereign to
your system and manage the overs and others within that
hydro fleet. So our system has baked a resilience that
a lot of ours don't.
Speaker 2 (13:07):
Brilliant, Guy, thank you so much and thank you for
being so patient answering my questions. Guy Wipro, who's Meridian
Energy General manager of Development, News Talk said, be it
is twelve to eleven.
Speaker 1 (13:18):
For more from Kerry Wood and Mornings, listen live to
News Talks at b from nine am weekdays, or follow
the podcast on iHeartRadio
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