Flood-prone dairy farm power stations emerge as being global energy trade-offs
An official scheme to encourage the development of immense solar generating sites on dairy farms outside North Island tourist townships has emerged as the proposed Helensville site (pictured) became again submerged in the region’s most recent floods.
The power site, an immense one, complete with large scale batteries and complex current conversion towers might even have been on its way to completion had not a local action group constantly drawn attention to the risks involved in the low-lying pastoral site.
The Helensville Group Opposing Solar Farm Construction has been a long term lone voice pointing out the dangers of the generating site to planners and also even those involved with the site implementation itself.
Because of its devotion to official ideals the mainstream media remains mute on these obvious and dangerous flaws.
New Zealand is 82 percent powered by renewables and any energy shortage is contrived due to state interference in other sources.
An explanation of the state’s backing of solar energy farms in the neighbourhood of North Island tourist townships is the existence of an approved formula to implement offset schemes for industrial foreign energy consumers.
This means that the overseas energy consumers could offset anywhere in the world their power requirements derived from oil and gas by pointing out their contribution to renewables In New Zealand in the form of the solar plants.
Such solar plants in the tourist towns can be established cheaply simply because they can literally plug into the existing substations of the towns. The offsets inducement explains the reckless insistence in locating these electrical plants on these low-lying dairy farms.
Plans put forward for the other North Island tourist town, Greytown, illustrate this strategy.
Plans for Greytown mirror those for Helensville because of the use of neighbouring dairy land which is similarly on flood prone pastoral land.
Ironically the dairy sector and tourism are New Zealand’s major foreign revenue earners
It is known that the government has involved itself in identifying finance for these power schemes.
It is known too that the government has ensured that very senior personnel of ultra large scale power consumers have had removed impediments to residence here.
The Helensville site inundation which was forecast by the local action group also points to a willingness to suspend the otherwise rigorously-enforced regime of nationwide ultra-cautious health and safety measures whenever is involved any construction project of any size at all for anything at all.
The existence of an offsets trade off scheme for industrial solar plants goes a long way to explaining why New Zealand dairy farms adjacent to townships and thus the accessible electricity sub stations have suddenly become an international focus for solar developers.
This is when there are so many much drier, hotter and much sunnier locations in the southern hemisphere and which are remote from townships.
