Flying up the Mokihinui River
We’ve been talking about the Mokihinui River, which Meridian Energy wants to dam. If you want to see what it looks like, here’s a video that a kayaker called Ben put together:
Metiria said last week:
This river is quintessentially wild and ecologically special - the type of river that captures the imagination of New Zealanders. It is sacrilege to destroy this gorge and ecosystems.
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April 14th, 2008 at 3:43 pm
Tried to watch it, but couldn’t get past that terrible, dull, THC soaked dub music - ah my ears!
April 14th, 2008 at 4:03 pm
agree with roger nome fwog,
god do yous Green need me,
I deliver 30 second videos with crunch
http://peterquixote.blogspot.com/
April 14th, 2008 at 5:35 pm
Music suits the place… Beautiful.
April 14th, 2008 at 5:58 pm
Fancy that, a rerun of project Aqua. And once again, if the question is to burn coal or destroy a gorge, the Greens choose to burn coal. Its a good look for the Green party, clearly.
April 14th, 2008 at 9:44 pm
Perhaps the choice is not so much Burn Coal or Destroy environment with a dam but Burn Coal and Destroy environment or Build Damn and destroy environment. Kinda like damned if you do and if you don’t…
Personally I’d choose plan C. Turn off electric towel heaters…
April 14th, 2008 at 10:16 pm
Hey Frog- got any good suggestions of better places to generate power?
I’m all for preserving valuable wilderness, if we have good alternatives available that can efficiently meet our needs without burning more coal or gas.
April 14th, 2008 at 11:22 pm
I’ve got one. Electricity demand growth on the Coast is fueled by dairying and coal mining and gold mining (not population growth). How about the underground coal mines like Pike River and Spring Creek capture and burn the methane ventilated from the coal seam and generate power. They could run the mine off it and export the excess back to the grid. It is climate-positive because CO2 is less warming potential than methane, and the gas was going to be released anyway by the mining activity. [Better still shut down the mine and ease the pressure on demand!] Sound fantastic - well Pike was considering it, but it is slightly cheaper to buy off the grid, and for that we apparently *need* to dam the Mokihinui. BTW the Arnold scheme is nearly approved and will add 35MW to the Coast’s 15MW, so that almost totals present demand. Compare this with Tasman/Marlborough who only generate 15% of their demand locally.
Other alternatives are wind and solar - dairy farms and factories use a lot of electricity to (inefficiently) heat water. What about solar hot water! Dairy farms can also use effluent digesters to generate electricity.
One could also argue that the West Coast already generates 10x its power needs - it’s called Manapouri and its 610MW is almost all gobbled by Tiwai. What about shut that down and feed the power north.
But no, our planning system and lack of government spine means an SOE will go for cheap and dirty dam on a pristine wilderness river.
There’s a few suggestions. There are always alternatives.
April 15th, 2008 at 11:00 am
Looks like the energy would be for dairy and coal expansion. So the greens are being consistant.
Energy would be used for the new pike river coal mine (that comes online later this year).
It is possible that energy would be used for the
cypress mine (happy valley) which transmission lines are rumoured to be going through or near.
clean energy for dirty industries..? sounds like the meridian deal with the tiwai smelter - colamlco/rio tinto.
Either it is energy for the west coast, or it is energy for some buisnesses. The power companies should be more honest what their energy is intended for.
April 15th, 2008 at 11:03 am
What about wind or offshore wind on the coast, and of course tidal.
The west coast had mad waves.. surely that would make awesome tidal energy.
and what about a biofuel… hemp would be perfect eh? and no to the frogblog rednecks (and you are way more boring the west coast rednecks btw) you can’t smoke hemp. it is good for a fibre and many other uses, like biofuel production.
Why does the coast need to dam its last remaining unpolluted rivers..? for dairy.
April 15th, 2008 at 4:46 pm
It’s all very well to say “what about…?” and there are many, many things that are better than burning coal, but, the bottom line is that ideas dont get built or used; proposals on the table get built, and things we have get used.
And Tuatara - it absolutely is a choice of two evils, wreck the environment or wreck the Environment. Currently (no pun intended) there is no option C that is to not to wreck the Environment/environment.
And, just for the record: my towel heater has been off for a very long time indeed.
April 15th, 2008 at 5:20 pm
does anyone know the wattage of a street light? for about 5 years now i have been complaining to auckland city council about certain street lights coming on at 3pm (now 2pm) & evidently it is a problem too difficult to fix.
any greens on the council?
April 15th, 2008 at 7:48 pm
Genesis’s answer apparently is to build a big (240 or 480 MW) more-efficient gas-fired power station. Unfortunately their web site probably won’t allow me to grab a simple link:
http://www.genesisenergy.co.nz/shadomx/apps/fms/fmsdownload.cfm?file_u uid=112BDB45-9765-9C7F-BCD8-46D5954EE02E&siteName=genesis
but it is accessible from their front page:
http://www.genesisenergy.co.nz/
Trevor.
April 15th, 2008 at 7:52 pm
Um, I thoght there was a Government moratorium onbuilding further gas-fired power stations.
So why is it that this one seems to be going ahead? What have I missed?
April 15th, 2008 at 7:55 pm
Many of the new power stations that are likely to come on line in the next few years are actually geothermal. Most of the rest are wind. The two can work reasonably well together, with the wind providing most of the power when it is blowing, while the geothermal can provide the power when it is needed and the wind isn’t blowing.
To meet peak demands, and to make use of the wind when demand is low, we can add vanadium flow batteries into the mix, where needed (such as near Rodney). Check out:
http://www.vrbpower.com/
This may actually be a cheaper option than gas-fired generation for meeting peak demand.
Trevor.
April 15th, 2008 at 7:56 pm
Toad,
Genesis are trying to get it approved as a peaking plant, rather than base-load generation, to meet security of supply, etc.
Trevor.
April 15th, 2008 at 8:37 pm
What would work even better than more wind power generation is wave power generation, which has the advantage of slower rises and falls in output and is predictable a few days ahead. Unfortunately the various power companies don’t appear to want to invest in wave power - probably because they perceive it as too risky or “unproven”. The government has made money available for marine power development - enough so they can claim that they are doing something, but too little, too late to be effective and wave is being forced to compete with tidal power for these funds. Really only a token effort.
Trevor.
April 15th, 2008 at 8:52 pm
Trevor29 said: Genesis are trying to get it approved as a peaking plant, rather than base-load generation, to meet security of supply, etc.
Trevor, what are the economics of this? I would have thought that the huge capital cost of building a gas-fired power station would hardly be economic if it were seldom to be feeding into the national grid.
Like Marsden B, that fed into the national grid for 9 hours in its entire time of commissioning! Maybe I’ve got the operational hours slightly wrong here (they were ridiculously minimal though), but it really was one of NZ’s most expensive energy white elephants.
April 15th, 2008 at 11:18 pm
I have absolutely no idea of the economics.
However they have indicated that this new plant will be more efficient than other plants, which means lower fuel costs. That means that they will run it ahead of many of the existing plants which have higher fuel costs due to their lower efficiencies. In one sense this is good for the country since it will save fuel and reduce CO2 emmissions. However it reduces incentives to invest in renewable power generation and burns through our gas supplies, which would be better used in our vehicle fleet.
It also means that the plant won’t really be just peaking plant.
Trevor.
April 16th, 2008 at 10:23 pm
Yes we need power but the Mokihinui River is a wilderness treasure that we need lo leave for future generations to enjoy. This river ranks 7th in NZ for its natural values. Leave it alone Meridian.
Steve