The Lammermoor Range Windfarm

This is the location that Google Maps gives for the Lammermoor Range.

I have no idea how correct that is, but it’s beside the point. If it’s within 100km of there, it’s still in the middle of nowhere. Seriously, even highway 87 shown on the map gets less traffic daily than a city back street.

It’s a stupid place for power generation. The electricity it generates is needed so far away, (Auckland) that at the same scale as this map it’d be off the map, off the monitor, and halfway to my ceiling.

Now, I’m sure it’s a nice place. The few people who go there must appreciate the echoing loneliness, the miles and miles of tussock etc etc.

But this is ridiculous.

All Black Anton Oliver says New Zealand’s energy sector is callous and Meridian Energy’s campaign to build a 176-turbine wind farm is “deliberately deceiving”.

And his evidence?

Oliver told a panel considering the farm that Meridian Energy was not to be trusted.”The recent events surrounding Solid Energy and the revelation that it knowingly and willingly employed people to spy on citizens, alongside Mercury Energy’s decision to turn off a home’s electricity and a human life for $163, illustrate the duplicitous and callous nature of this sector.

Meridian are no better,” he said.

Ah HA! So, we have an electricity company that did something evil. Therefore, without any connection presented, we know that this one must be too.

The reason for Project Hayes was not to provide power for local use, as advocated by the company, but to provide power to Comalco, the operator of the Tiwai Aluminium Smelter.

Comalco used over half of the power already generated in Otago and Southland, he said.

Ok…. but isn’t there by definition already power plants to take care of that? I seem to recall Comalco owned lines and transformers taking power directly from Manapouri. Wait… wasn’t Manapouri specifically built for that? Didn’t Manapouri recently have an extra tunnel built to increase capacity?

“Meridian’s campaign has been one of half-truths, misinformation, hiding and fudging information in a manner that can only be described as deliberately deceiving or unbelievably incompetent.”

Well, he’s right that someone is deliberately deceiving or unbelievably incompetent.

It was time New Zealand considered different ways of generating energy.

Funny story… when people say that, they usually mean we should switch to wind-farms. One wonders is Oliver is trying to say we should harness pixies to underground hand turbines or something. No one could possibly object to that!
Mercury has replied.

Turner, a veteran of the electricity industry, said: “Anton’s entitled to his view. He’s a great All Black, but is he a great energy analyst?” Lots of Oliver’s ideas were flawed, he said.

“I wouldn’t want to develop a power system around Anton’s ideas …”

Great. Another pixie lover.

Wait, I have another idea. Perhaps we could take all the NIMBY hippies, and put them into pods where they would participate in a virtual world, where all is right and good, where electricity can be generated without any downsides to anyone.

At the same time, these hippies generate electricity for us though the electricity generated from their body movements.

Everybody wins!

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