Mangahewa Generation

The Mangahewa generation plant is 100% owned and operated by Todd Energy.

Location

The plant is located at the McKee Production Station approximately 20 km SE of New Plymouth, some 12 km inland from the Methanex Motunui complex.

Purpose

In a new generation project at Todd Energy’s McKee & Mangahewa plant, raw untreated gas from the recently drilled Mangahewa 3 well is being used to generate enough electricity to power about 10,000 houses annually.

Generating Plant

The Mangahewa Generation plant comprises three packaged electricity generation units.

The units are driven by large internal combustion engines with the design tweaked so they can run on raw wellstream gas rather than pipeline gas. Each unit can generate up to 3.2 MW with the electricity exported to the local grid.

During excavation an old unidentified sump containing drilling mud from the 1980s was uncovered. This mud had to be excavated and removed to give a solid base for the foundations. The mud was tested and once cleared for use transported to a farm in North Taranaki where it is used as food for worms.