Two 67m long blades and 88m towers came off a ship at South Port at 3am on November 11 and were taken to Mercury Energy’s Kaiwera wind farm.
Site manager and longtime Gore local Stu Davie said since June last year, his various specialist teams had been priming the grounds for the turbines’ arrival.
The large pieces were to be handed over to assembly crews who positioned them around a crane which, like Lego, fitted the turbine parts into place.
The large-scale assemblage will begin from November 24.
A former earth-moving and cable laying business owner, Mr Davie said he cut his teeth on wind farm production in stage one, which completed in 2023.
Now in full swing in the second stage, he was used to all the complications, such as the weather, that could go wrong with managing the many construction teams.
The site had fared reasonably well in last month’s destructive winds, which was lucky and mostly due to them not having any spare materials lying around, Mr Davie said.
Its biggest gust was only 156kmh — not as strong as further south.
The team had been getting to know their Mataura and Gore neighbours in the last three years and had been happy to support local farmers during the extreme weather last year.
Mr Davie also highlighted the impact the more than 150 wind farm workers on site each day had on local businesses.
It had been told that during construction, there was a notable increase in the amount of coffees and and pies sold in town, he said.
That also included accommodation and nightly dinners bought by his visiting teams from across the country.
When he spoke to The Ensign in April, he explained that his teams were, while priming the site for turbines, returning the hilly farms to their original state.
Any rocks crushed in the excavation process were re-purposed into strong metal roads for carrying heavy loads and a private airstrip was being rebuilt on the property.
The company had tried to look for local contractors, but to find experts in those particular fields in Southland to work at such a large scale was tricky, he said.
However, the contractors from Christchurch, Timaru and the West Coast still hired locals, about half the workforce coming from the area.
Once stage one and two are completed, the wind farm will have an installed capacity of 198 megawatts, and be able to power the equivalent of about 93,000 homes.
