Small is beautiful

Blogger: VUW Research Fellow and West Coast Committee Member, Brian Anderson

Recently, I attended a renewable energy strategy meeting for the West Coast, on behalf of Forest and Bird.

The meeting was sponsored by Development West Coast and came after statements last year from West Coast Regional Council CEO Chris Ingle that council should “explicitly promote the West Coast” as a power exporter and lobby the Government to change the Conservation Act to enable more use of conservation land. So it was with some trepidation that I went along.

I was pleasantly surprised then, when the energy users and suppliers, district council staff, conservation groups and recreationalists, pretty much all agreed that the West Coast should aim to be self sufficient in electricity, not a net exporter. This would mean only modest amounts of additional generation are required.

There was a general feeling at the meeting that ‘it’s all about security of supply’. This was prescient, since the next day much of the West Coast lost power for some hours because of gale-force winds!

So what could energy generation on the West Coast look like in a decade or two?

Micro hydro is ideally suited to the region, with steep hills and high rainfall, and is certainly the answer Forest and Bird should be advocating.

It seems that may be the position of central government too, at least some of the time. I recalled a report done for the Ministry of Economic Development on potential hydroelectric schemes, which to my horror had listed power schemes as likely for just about every river in South Westland. But when I went back to look recently, the report had been updated with a severely shortened list, and
added:

“With the high flow in Westland rivers there are opportunities for micro hydros in many locations. This is a tradition of the area that could be re-established through the use of modern control technologies.”

Companies like Meridian Energy just don’t seem to have a handle on this scale of technology. But smaller companies are coming through, with a schemes like Amethyst Ravine near Hari Hari (6MW), Lake Rochfort(4 MW) near Westport and one consented at Stockton near Granity (25 MW).

The cheapest way of meeting our energy wants is energy efficiency – which is far more economically efficient than building more generation. However, small scale generation adds resilience to the electricity network, reduces distribution costs and is environmentally far preferable to damming the main stems of primary rivers. The era of big dams is over.

Tackling the issue of how we’ll generate power for our growing population is something that I will tackle in my next blog! Standby.