Two giant solar farms switch on in New Zealand — enough power for about 71,000 homes

Christchurch Airport has a new neighbour with a second job: the 150-megawatt Kowhai Park solar farm beside the runways, roughly 300,000 panels producing about 275 gigawatt-hours a year — the annual use of about 36,000 homes — built by Contact Energy and Lightsource bp, with its power sold to the airport and to dairy company Synlait. Days earlier, the 202-megawatt Tauhei Solar Farm also launched, able to power about 35,000 homes and now moving toward full commercial operation. Together, two of the largest solar farms the country has ever built are feeding clean power into the grid in the same month.

SDG 7 · Affordable and clean energy — Mechanism: infrastructure build