Case Study: Gisborne Airport, Gisborne, New Zealand

The Gisborne airport services the domestic airport for the Gisborne regional with regular flights between Auckland and Wellington along with a smaller domestic airline servicing the smaller regional districts such as Rotorua or Tauranga or Whakatane.

This solar commercial project was completed as part of a trial (ie. pilot study) for future expansion for possibly the airport or other infrastructure projects in their network.

Gisborne Airport Limited, is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Eastland Group Ltd. There operations include Eastland Port, Gisborne Airport and Eastland Network – the electricity network for Gisborne, Wairoa and the East Coast – as well as Eastland Generation, which produces electricity from hydro, diesel and geothermal plants

The 37.13kWp roof mount array installed on Gisborne Airport, Gisborne consists of 2 x 20kW GoodWe 3-Phase String Inverter. The PV modules were roof mounted using industrial grade Clenergy PV-ezRack flat to roof and tilt racking frame aluminium rails certified for Region D wind rating. The solar strings are taken off the roof to isolators and fed into the inverters via appropriately sized cables and protection devices.

This installation was sub-contracted to Electrinet and the installation was carried out under guidelines of AS/NZS standards in 2020.

This solar system will generate 49.55MWh/year of solar energy. The outcomes and benefits for this installation include:

• Carbon emissions reduction – sustainability reduction targets
• Cost savings – providing a system payback in five years
• Valuable knowledge for future solar commercial project expansion