Back in May last year we told the story of how Northport was handling the arrival of 80 battery storage units for the 100-megawatt battery energy storage system (BESS) at Meridian Energy’s Ruakākā Energy Park.

Meridian started construction on the second stage of the park, a 130MW solar farm, in recent months. Ultimately this will cover about 163ha of the 201ha project site and produce up to 230GWh of energy per year from about 250,000 solar panels.

This will be injected into the national grid at Transpower’s Bream Bay substation.

As with the BESS units, all the equipment used to build the solar farm is coming ashore at Northport. This includes the mounting structures, frames and inverters. Northport has been contracted to undertake all product devanning in readiness for transportation to the solar farm site.

We are working with Meridian’s main contractor, Ethical Power, and supplier-nominated sub-contractors to provide biosecurity checks, secure storage for the equipment and carefully sequenced delivery to the nearby project site.

Meridian plans to enhance and protect an existing 18 hectare wetland on one of its solar farm sites as part of the development. It also plans to create a new native habitat area of around 11.7 hectares, including five hectares of wetland.

This will help cleanse stormwater from the energy park and wider catchment before it flows into the Ruakākā River. Environmental benefits include new habitat for taonga bird species such as bittern and dabchick ducks.

“There are many upsides to Meridian’s presence at Marsden Point so it’s been a privilege to facilitate their energy park project,” said Northport’s commercial manager, David Finchett.

“It’s yet another example of the tremendous opportunity for growth and development in the wider Marsden Point and Ruakākā area, all of which we’re well positioned to enable.”

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