Manapouri power station

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Manapōuri Hydro Station
Manapouri Power Station - hall with the generators
Manapouri Power Station - hall with the generators
location
Manapōuri Hydro Station (New Zealand)
Manapōuri Hydro Station
Coordinates 45 ° 31 '17 "  S , 167 ° 16' 40"  O Coordinates: 45 ° 31 '17 "  S , 167 ° 16' 40"  O
country New ZealandNew Zealand New Zealand
place Southland District , Southland Region, South Island , New Zealand
Waters Lake Manapouri
Height upstream 178  m
power plant
owner Meridian Energy
operator Meridian Energy
Start of planning 1950s
construction time 1964 to 1972
Start of operation 1972
technology
Bottleneck performance 800 megawatts
Average
height of fall 		178 m
Expansion flow 500 m³ / s
Turbines Vertical Francis (General Electric)
Generators 7 (Siemens)
Others
Website Manapōuri hydro station
was standing June 2018

The Manapouri power plant , called Manapōuri Hydro Station by the operator , is a cavern power plant in the Southland District of the Southland region on the South Island of New Zealand . It is the largest hydroelectric power station in the country.

geography

The actual power plant is at the end of the West Arm s of Lake Manapouri , 26 km west-northwest of the town Manapouri and 26 km southwest of Te Anau . In order to use the gradient of the water of Lake Manapouri to sea level, two 10 km long tunnels were driven from the location of the power plant in a north-westerly direction through the mountains of Fiordland to Deep Cove , an arm of Doubtful Sound .

history

Power plant seen from the lake

The idea to build a hydropower plant at Lake Manapouri was born in 1904 by PS Hay from the then Public Works Department , but the seclusion of the lake and the challenges facing the engineers did not allow the idea to be realized. When Consolidated Zinc from Australia planned to build an aluminum smelter near the town of Bluff in the south of the South Island in 1956, the idea of ​​building a power station was taken up again due to the smelter's immense power requirements and a contract was signed on January 19, 1960 with Consolidated Zinc , which provided the Wanted to build power plant, closed.

The contract provided for the connection of Lake Te Anau and Lake Manapouri, raising the water level to 30 m by building a dam and guaranteeing Consolidated Zinc the rights to use both lakes for 99 years. In 1963 the company decided not to build the power plant, only the aluminum smelter. After the funding was clarified by the government and the project implementation took over, construction of the power plant began in 1964 with a tunnel to Deep Cove . It cost NZ $ 135.5 million to build  , nearly 8 million man hours and 16 workers the lives.

The first electricity was produced in September 1969, and in phase # 2 the water level of the lake was to be raised by 8 m. Fierce popular resistance formed against this, and with 264,907 signatures, the initiators of the protest forced the government to give in. In 1972 the plant officially went into operation. However, a design flaw in the system emerged which, at full capacity utilization of the power plant with its planned 700  MW, could have resulted in the power plant cavern being flooded due to insufficient throughput of the underwater tunnel due to incorrectly assessed hydraulic pipe friction . The plant could only produce a maximum of 585 MW of electricity. In order to counter this restriction, it was finally decided in 1997 to build a second, parallel tunnel to drain off the used water, which went into operation in 2002. Since then, the system has been able to operate with an output of up to 800 MW, since on the one hand the headwater can be drained off completely and safely, and on the other hand a greater net head is available due to the improved flow conditions.

In July 2020, the operator announced that it would close the aluminum smelter in Bluff in August 2021. This has sparked debates about how electrical energy could be used in the future.

Power plant data

The machine cavern of the power plant is 111 m long and 18 m wide. It contains seven 121.5 MW Siemens generators, whose electricity, generated at a voltage of 13,800 volts, is boosted to 220,000 volts by machine transformers weighing 133 tons . The used for electricity generation, water flows at a maximum flow rate of 500 m³ per second and a drop height of 178  m by the intake structure and seven headrace shafts and drives the seven Francis turbines with vertical shaft arrangement. After exiting the suction pipes of the turbines, the water flows through the two 10 m diameter tunnels to Doubtful Sound. Although the power plant is designed for an output of 850 MW today, it will be limited to 800 MW of electricity generation.

A large part of the electrical energy produced by the Manapōuri power station is used for aluminum production 160 km further south-east near Bluff in the smelter of today's New Zealand Aluminum Smelter , which is designed for a consumption of 572 MW .

See also

Web links

Commons : Manapouri Power Station  - collection of images

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Topo250 maps . Land Information New Zealand , accessed June 3, 2018 .
  2. ↑ Manapōuri hydro station . Meridian Energy , accessed June 3, 2018 .
  3. ↑ a b Discover Manapōuri . (PDF 780 kB) Meridian Energy , November 2015, archived from the original on January 28, 2018 ; accessed on April 24, 2019 (English, original website no longer available).
  4. ↑ a b c d Manapouri Power Station . Engineering New Zealand , accessed June 3, 2018 .
  5. ↑ Hamish Rutherford: Rio Tinto announces plans to close New Zealand aluminum smelter in 2021 (en) , NZ Herald. July 9, 2020. 
  6. ↑ Alex Braae: The Bulletin: Tiwai Point closing affects everything (en) , The Spinoff. July 10, 2020. 
  7. ↑ Ambitious proposals for surplus electricity once Tiwai closes (en) , Radio New Zealand. August 10, 2020. 
  8. ^ Collette Devlin, Phil McCarthy : Tiwai Smelter deal signed between Meridian Energy and NZAS . In: Stuff - Buisinees . Fairfax Media , August 3, 2015, accessed June 3, 2018 .