Aniwhenua Hydro Station

The environmental award-winning Aniwhenua Hydro taps into a renewable energy source.

This plant is owned and operated by Bay of Plenty Energy (BoPE).

• Station Location
• Station Purpose
• Station History
• Benefits of Station
• Generating Plant
• Station Statistics

Location

The Aniwhenua station is located on the Rangitaiki River.

Purpose

The plant provides much of the region's electricity needs via an environmentally friendly and award winning scheme.

As an added bonus a major recreational asset has been created for locals and visitors alike.

History

Constructed over three years at a cost of $27 million in the late 1970's. The Aniwhenua scheme involved the damming of the Rangitaiki River, forming a 255 hectare storage lake.

Aniwhenua is named after the falls which are adjacent to the power house.

The scheme was one of the first hydroelectricity schemes owned by a major supply company and paved the way for subsequent generation developments by BoPE.

Benefits

Aniwhenua provides an ideal environment generating electricity via a renewable means and saving transmission loses due to its embedded nature.

As a further benefit, Lake Aniwhenua is a major recreational asset providing superb fishing, duck shooting, camping and picnicking for thousands of locals and visitors each year.

This environmental award-winning scheme is located on an important eel fishery of particular significance to Maori. An ongoing programme transfers migrating eels both upstream and downstream from lake Aniwhenua, successfully maintaining eel stocks.

Generating Plant

The Aniwhenua scheme consists of a 200 metre long, 10 metre high dam structure with two radial control gates which can discharge 1,270 cubic metres of water per second.

Three additional flap gates are designed to handle higher flood conditions. A 2.2 kilometre canal with a fall rate of 1 in 2,500 diverts water from the lake to a head pond above the powerhouse.

Water flows from the head of the pond through steeply dropping penstocks at a rate of 75 cubic metres a second to the powerhouse. There, it drives two 12.5 MW generators before being discharged back to the river just below the Aniwhenua Falls.

Operation of the powerhouse and the dam control gates is completely automatic - run from a sophisticated computer system at BoPE's Whakatane office.

Statistics

Ownership	100% Ownership Bay of Plenty Energy (BoPE)
Average Annual Output	135 GWh
Total MW rating	25 MW
Turbines	Escher Wyss
Head	38 metres
Flow to Station	75 cumecs (cubic metres/sec)
Canal Length	2.2 kilometres
Lake area	255 hectares
Generators	2 x 12.5 MW ASEA at 11,000 Volts