CEN - Tauhara commissioning progress update

Thursday 28th March 2024

Commissioning works at Contact’s Tauhara geothermal plant have been progressing well, with remedial work to the steam separation plant successfully completed.

Power station commissioning activities are expected to commence shortly, with first synchronisation to the system occurring in late April / early May 2024 at the earliest. After completion of power station testing activities, the 30-day reliability run required to support commercial operations could begin in late May 2024.

Contact maintains its expectation that Tauhara will be online at an initial capacity of at least 152MW in Q3 2024 and notes that a range of timing outcomes within the quarter remain possible. This reflects the potential discovery of latent commissioning issues in the next stage of power station testing, as can be expected during commissioning. Within that context, this progress announcement seeks to highlight the possibility that Tauhara could be online for winter 2024.

The project team continues to work tirelessly to accelerate the Tauhara commissioning timeline to deliver this worldclass geothermal project. Seeing Tauhara online will be a key milestone in the delivery of Contact26, Contact’s strategy to lead the decarbonisation of New Zealand.

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Tauhara commissioning progress update

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