Restoration of Electric Power Supply to Faseu Village

The Registered Trust “Friends of Faseu” seeks funding support for a rural electricity project in Papua New Guinea. The project involves the repair and restoration of a small hydro electric plant and the associated electrical distribution system supplying community facilities at Faseu, a village in the mountains of the Huon Peninsula in the Morobe Province. The system commenced operation in December 2005, but suffered major damage due to flood and landslip approximately two years later.

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Letter to Engineering Insight Magazine

Climate change is one of the biggest challenges facing humanity. The negative effects particularly affect developing countries and are only beginning to be felt. They will increase greatly over coming decades unless we all accept our responsibilities and substantially reduce our greenhouse gas emissions.

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Pumped Storage Planning – 1970s VS 2020

Pumped Storage Planning, 1970s vs 2020 By Dr Alastair Barnett Webinar 21 Oct 2020 Until the recent flurry of publicity about the Lake Onslow proposal, pumped hydropower storage had not been seriously considered in New Zealand since the 1970s. At that time the Tekapo canal was under construction to link the two main storage reservoirs (Lakes Tekapo and Pukaki) in the Upper Waitaki power development, and an obvious option was to design the canal to take pumped flow from Pukaki to Tekapo as well as gravity flow from Tekapo to Pukaki. The canal design was duly analysed, constructed and tested to have the required reverse flow capacity. Instead, the newly developed Maui gas field was utilised and the Huntly thermal power station continues in use, and the importation of coal means that our thermal emissions have actually increased. The disastrous outcomes of poor power planning have now been recognised, but the reaction seems to be one of panic, adopting the first scheme to come to mind while ignoring the alternatives, especially the final 10% of the Tekapo-Pukaki scheme.

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What Is Wrong With The New Zealand Electricity Market?

Dr Geoff Bertram spoke to an online meeting of Engineers for Social Responsibility on 19 August 2020. He reviewed the electricity reforms since 1986 and their effects, particularly on pricing, excess profits and anti-competitive practices. He noted the effects particularly on increasing poverty and inequality, specially child poverty and energy poverty. He suggested steps that could be taken to deal with these problems, but noted that invested interests would make implementation of any of them, very difficult to achieve.

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Submission In Response To: Accelerating Renewable Energy And Energy Efficiency

Accelerating the use of renewable energy and improving energy efficiency are both very important steps that need to be taken, and we agree with many of the suggestions in the Discussion Document. However, given the extreme climate emergency we are currently now facing, with the strong possibility of catastrophic outcomes if it is not adequately addressed, these steps on their own are not nearly enough for New Zealand to contribute sufficiently towards holding global heating below the current internationally agreed limit of 1.5°C.

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Renewable Energy

Renewable energy is energy derived directly or indirectly from sunlight, wind, rain, tidal flows and ranges, waves, and thermal energy stored in the oceans, which are naturally replenished over fairly brief periods of time. Geothermal energy is also regarded as renewable because of the extremely large amounts of heat available from the earth’s core. Major sources of renewable energy include hydro power, wind power, solar power, geothermal power and bioenergy. Moving rapidly to greater reliance on renewable energy in place of fossil fuels has become critically important because of the urgent need to control global warming by reducing carbon dioxide emissions to the atmosphere.

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