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It is time for the Stewart Island community to work together and come to some agreement about what a renewable power supply solution looks like, the island’s development agency says.
Great South development manager Steve Canny said it was important the community reached an agreement on what would work for them and solved issues such as location sites before any funding from government agencies.
It would be difficult for central government to get in behind anything until it had been fully scoped.
"Before you seek the money, the solutions and the way you deliver the solutions have to be agreed to by the island people ... There’s no point the government saying ‘yeah, we’ll come, here goes $15 million or $10 million or $5 million or whatever’. And then you find that it falters because the groundwork hasn’t been done."
The island had been granted more than $3 million in 2019 to build a wind turbine before site landowners were consulted.
Residents accepted the problem was a complex one to solve.
One resident explained the proposed turbine would reduce diesel consumption by only 40%.
It was "no silver bullet".
Also the strategy solution, which proposed wind and solar, still did not get rid of diesel generation, she said.
Southland district councillor Jon Spraggon said the community was already on board, but felt it was not being listened to. It simply wanted reliable power which was diesel free.
"The community knows what it wants and where it wants to go, but it’s the next step up.
"We’ve had meeting after meeting, and we’ve seen all the reports."
Multiple reports and discussions over the past 38 years had failed to produce a workable outcome.
Stewart Island-Rakiura Community Board chairman Aaron Conner said turbines would make the island’s limited residential land unusable.
"We haven’t got that much land."
Land would need to be cleared, no matter where a turbine site was chosen.
"So it may as well be cleared in the national park than the private land, and keep the private land.
"We have to keep asking questions. It’s got to go somewhere."
Rakiura National Park covers 1400sq km or 85% of Stewart Island.
Mr Canny said he hoped the residents would be able to use the Murihiku energy strategy, released earlier this month, as a good starting point for a workable solution.
The report cited options such as undersea cable connected to the mainland, onshore and offshore wind turbines and hydro and solar sources but recommended an onshore wind turbine combined with solar and battery back-up as the most financially viable option.
Various turbine sites had been identified for the report. But a project committee now needed to explore those further, he said.
The strategy had been released for public feedback. However, members of the public at a public meeting in Invercargill on Tuesday evening said they felt marginalised because they considered the April 26 deadline too soon.
Mr Canny said he had taken the feedback on board and had agreed to extend the submission period two weeks.
By Toni McDonald