When the Wind Blows

Meridi­an Energy have announced plans for a new wind farm at and around Quartz Hill, near Makara. With around 70 tur­bines planned for the farm, and each one of those three times big­ger than the one on Brook­lyn, there’s the poten­tial for 210 mega­watts of power to be pro­duced – enough for 100000 house­holds, or, more simply, all of Wel­ling­ton and the Hutt.

While the Makara com­munity seems poised to fight the plan, we here at the Wel­ling­ton­ist seem to be veer­ing to the side of ‘bring it on!’. The farm will make Wel­ling­ton energy self-suf­fi­cient, it turns one of our per­ceived neg­at­ives (bloody wind!) into a fant­ast­ic pos­it­ive, and $100m will spent loc­ally dur­ing con­struc­tion.

As much as some people might feel the scenery is being des­troyed by the mon­ster wind machines, oth­er people will like­wise think they’re some­thing they might want to go and see. They are, after all, quite pretty. Really. And sev­enty sky­scraper tall tur­bines going at full tilt in a decent Wel­ling­ton gale will look amaz­ing.