Meridian Kicks Off Refurbishment Work on Unit at New Zealand's Waitaki Hydro Plant

Researched by Industrial Info Resources Australia (Perth, Australia)--Meridian Energy Limited (Wellington, New Zealand) recently began work on the third unit at the 90-megawatt (MW) Waitaki Hydro Plant as part of a four-year turbine refurbishment program. The 15-MW unit was decommissioned last year, and Meridian is disassembling the equipment to refurbish and replace turbine and generator components, including the auxiliary equipment.

Following the unit disassembly, the refurbishment will begin in May and will proceed for two to three months, with project completion and unit commissioning scheduled for the third quarter this year.

The four-year, $40 million Waitaki hydro station refurbishment was announced in February 2013 and is the last of Meridian's major hydro refurbishment programmes. Meridian Energy appointed Downer Group Limited (Auckland, New Zealand) to perform the main refurbishment work.

The subcontracting work was awarded to Farra Engineering Pty Limited (Otago, New Zealand) and E-Type Engineering Limited (Invercargill, New Zealand). Both companies are based in New Zealand and provide specialized engineering, fabrication and installation services for power plants.

The Waitaki Hydro plant is located in Invercargill, Southland, and consists of six operating units, including the one to be refurbished in May. Each unit was built with six English Electric Francis Horizontal turbines attached to an English Electric generator.

Meridian Energy completed refurbishment work on units 1 and 2 in March and November last year. Meridian is developing a proposal to conduct major outages on units 4, 5 and 6 at Waitaki in the next two years.

The company owns and operates seven hydro stations in New Zealand, including New Zealand's largest hydro station, Manapouri, and second-largest hydro plant, Benmore. Meridian completed refurbishment of all the Benmore hydro units in the last few years as part of a $67 million refurbishment of the massive power station.

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