Meridian Energy, a New Zealand state-owned energy company, and Nova Energy, a Wellington-headquartered subsidiary of conglomerate Todd Corporation, have agreed to form a joint venture to build and operate one of New Zealand’s largest solar PV plants.
On 20 December, the two companies partnered to form a 50-50 joint venture to aid the development of the 400MW Te Rahui solar PV plant.
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Although the site would rank amongst the largest in the country for generation capacity, it is still trumped by projects such as the proposed Helios Energy New Zealand Solar PV Park, which will have a generation capacity of 1GW. It is worth noting that this development is currently in the permitting stage.
The Te Rahui site, which will require NZ$660 million (US$370 million) of investment to develop fully, will be located in Rangitāiki, within the Taupō District on New Zealand’s north island.
Resource consent for the site was acquired in April 2024 with plans to reach a Financial Investment Decision in Q1 of 2025. Once this has been completed, the solar PV plant will be developed in two 200MW stages.
Meridian chief executive Neal Barclay said the 50-50 offtake agreement with Nova “makes strong commercial sense”.
“At 400MW, Te Rahui is a big project and sharing the investment and offtake makes strong commercial sense for both parties, while the project will also benefit home and business customers by further strengthening security of supply,” Barclay said.
“It’s a real win-win and we’re delighted to have this opportunity to partner with Nova on Te Rahui.”
Meridian and Nova have signed non-binding terms sheets regarding Te Rahui and intend to enter into binding agreements early next year, including power purchase agreements (PPAs) for the electricity produced from the solar PV plant.
Readers of PV Tech will likely be aware of Meridian’s presence within New Zealand’s solar PV market. The organisation is behind the development of the 120MW Ruakākā Solar Farm, which was granted development consent in September 2024. It is hoped that the site will be finished in late 2026.
The project will feature 250,000 solar PV modules and is the second stage of the development of the Ruakākā Energy Park, which also includes a 100MW/200MWh duration battery energy storage system (BESS).
As reported by our sister site, Energy-Storage.news, Saft is providing the 2-hour duration system, which will participate in energy arbitrage and frequency regulation and help free up network hosting capacity in the reserve markets of the country’s North Island.
20MW solar PV plant in Pukenui nears completion
Elsewhere in the New Zealand solar PV market, Far North Solar Farm, a solar energy asset developer based in Auckland, revealed that around 70% of the solar PV modules have been installed at the Pukenui Solar Farm, with energisation scheduled for early 2025.
Dutch developer and asset owner Photon Energy Group is carrying out the ongoing module installation. Once this has been completed, electrical work and testing will begin before the 20.8MW solar PV plant is fully energised.
The plant is located on the northern tip of New Zealand’s north island, around 360km from Auckland.
