Episode notes
About 92% of New Zealand's electricity comes from sources that need no imported fuel
at all. Rain falls, steam rises, the turbines turn. On paper this is the episode where
we're fine.
Then you ask who built the turbines.
When Mercury spent $90 million refurbishing Karāpiro, the work went to an Austrian
firm — whose predecessor had supplied the original turbines at Kaitawa in 1948. Even
Arapuni, the first state-built dam feeding the national grid, was built under contract
by a British company. "We used to do it all ourselves" turns out never to have been
quite true.
So this isn't a supply-chain story like food or water. It's a maintenance and
manufacturing story. Hydro at 54–58%, geothermal around 22%, wind just over 9% — none
of it needs a tanker. All of it needs transformers, control gear, bearings, castings
and the technicians who know them, and almost none of that is made here.
We also go looking for what a reverted, smaller version might look like, including a
Rotorua workshop building micro-hydro turbines out of recycled Fisher & Paykel washing
machine motors.
At The End Of The World is hosted by Nic Roland and produced by Jamie Thomas.
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