New Zealand solar farm developer Lightyears Solar has turned on the Waingawa Solar Farm, a 4.7 MWp community agrivoltaic project.
Built by sub-contractors Downer, Sol Srv Solar Services, and local contractors, the project connects to distributor Powerco’s network, to provide electricity for the surrounding district and grow the renewable proportion of power supply in the area.
The power will be purchased by New Zealand’s largest independent electricity generator and renewables developer, Manawa Energy, under a power purchase agreement (PPA).
Lightyears Solar Director Matt Shanks said the landowners at Waingawa Solar Farm have also built a holiday property on their land and see solar as another way to diversify their income from the property whilst providing long term security.
“We are receiving a lot of interest from farmers wanting solar on their land,” Shanks said. “In this case that’s more value out of farmable land in the form of agricultural output and power or leasing output. The desire for agrivoltaic farming is entering the national consciousness, the demand is rocketing compared to just two years ago. Landowners are also doing their research, coming to us already well-informed about solar and the opportunities it provides.”
This content is protected by copyright and may not be reused. If you want to cooperate with us and would like to reuse some of our content, please contact: editors@pv-magazine.com.
By submitting this form you agree to pv magazine using your data for the purposes of publishing your comment.
Your personal data will only be disclosed or otherwise transmitted to third parties for the purposes of spam filtering or if this is necessary for technical maintenance of the website. Any other transfer to third parties will not take place unless this is justified on the basis of applicable data protection regulations or if pv magazine is legally obliged to do so.
You may revoke this consent at any time with effect for the future, in which case your personal data will be deleted immediately. Otherwise, your data will be deleted if pv magazine has processed your request or the purpose of data storage is fulfilled.
Further information on data privacy can be found in our Data Protection Policy.