A dry Southland winter has provided ideal conditions to make great progress on the construction of Kaiwera Downs wind farm’s stage two.
The work started in June last year and Mercury Energy has nearly completed construction of the wind farm’s 34km roading network.
Mercury Energy executive general manager generation development Matt Tolcher said in a statement the project team had laid more than 75km of cable which would be used to connect the wind farm’s next 36 turbines, the first of which were expected to arrive in November.
Mr Tolcher said the project team was looking forward to seeing the first turbines arrive.
"We’re working through site preparations and protocols to make sure everything is in place before the turbines arrive.
‘‘We expect to start generating from stage two by mid 2026."
The project team had completed work on 18 of the turbine foundations, while the wind farm’s new substation and its operations and maintenance buildings were near completion.
The project had recorded 160,000 hours of work during the first 14 months of construction on the $486million development.
The wind farm continued to be a hive of activity with more than 120 people working across the site each day.
Mercury had worked with landowners to install new fencing around the construction site to ensure lambing and calving season, as well as other farming operations, were not interrupted.
The first 10 turbines were opened November, 2023.
