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The Poihipi Power Station is a geothermal power station owned and operated by Contact Energy. It is located on Poihipi Road near Taupo in New Zealand. The plant produces around 350 GWh pa, utilising geothermal steam from the Wairakei field, and is operated as part of the Wairakei geothermal system.〔(【引用サイトリンク】title=Geothermal Fields: Wairakei-Tauhara )〕 ==Development== The station has had an extraordinarily contentious history. In the beginning, Alistair McLachlan and his wife Ava Marie ran a sheep farm for their Waituruturu trust, but also a greenhouse to grow roses and orchids in "artificial monsoon" conditions enabled by geothermal heat: approximately two square kilometres of their land overlay the Wairakei geothermal field. Their Waituruturu trust joined with Mercury Network (wholly owned subsidiary of Mercury Energy) to form a joint venture, Mercury Geotherm Limited, (33% owned by the McLauchlans, or 49% according to the N.Z. Herald of Tuesday 11'th January 2005) and Poihipi Land Limited, wholly owned by MGL. Some land was for the power station, the rest remained as farmland. The original design involved two 23MW refurbished Elliot turbine-generators but late in the design these were abandoned in favour of a newer Fuji Electric 55MW system completed for the Geysers geothermal field in the U.S.A by the state of California, but never run. Despite the cost of conversion from the U.S.A standard of 60 cycles/sec. to the N.Z. standard of 50 cycles/sec. the resulting project was much cheaper than using new equipment. (''Utilisation of Second-Hand Plant to Reduce Capital Investment and Project Lead Times'', Minoru Frederiksens et al., 2000) Steam supply constraints limited full power to about fourteen hours a day, with only about 3MW at night. All other geothermal stations are typically run at constant full power. This unusual operating pattern attracted analysis, as in ''Optimised Numerical Modelling of Production from the Poihipi Dry Steam Zone: Wairakei Geothermal System'' by Sadiq J. Zarrouk et al., 2006. Initial maximum power levels soon fell from ~43MW to 30MW due to a shortage of steam. In 2001 Contact applied for fresh consents (for both Wairakei and Poihipi) which were granted in 2004 but appealed against by the Taupo Council (concerned over land subsidence) and others. In 2007, approval was gained, so with access to more steam (from the whole field, not just that under the McLachlan's land) generation attained 50MW, full-time; the plot shows that such operation precedes 2007. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Poihipi Power Station」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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