Contact Energy Ltd

Being a good neighbour is at the heart of what we do at Contact, and a big part of that is supporting communities across Aotearoa. To make that support really count, we build meaningful and long-term partnerships with key community organisations and groups. Thanks to the help of Northland Community Foundation, NZ, we are pleased to announce the setup of a new fund called ‘The Northland Contact Energy Community Wellbeing Fund’. The fund aims to help improve the wellbeing of Northland communities by supporting services such as foodbanks, budgeting services and welfare centres. To get things started we have made an initial donation of $30,000, which the Northland Community Foundation will administer. Bryan Middleton, our Head of Customer Experience says: “We’re mindful people living in Northland have had a tough time this year, so we felt setting up this fund was a good way for us to support communities in the area.”

Talking all things Te Huka Unit 3: Exciting news – a key milestone has been reached at our newest geothermal energy power station this week! Transpower New Zealand are onsite in Taupō and have synchronised Te Huka 3 to the national electricity grid, meaning it is feeding power into New Zealand’s energy supply for the first time. This will initially be a small amount – about 15 megawatts (MW) – but it will then be ramped up over the next few weeks to its full capacity of 51.4MW ⚡ (enough renewable energy to power the equivalent of 60,000 homes🏡). It’s been a busy month or so of commissioning work to get to this stage - from introducing steam to the separator, well testing, through to pentane arriving on site. A big shout out to our Te Huka 3 team for their incredible efforts! 🙌 There’s more work to go, with lots of rigorous testing planned to ensure everything is running safely and efficiently before the binary cycle geothermal power station is officially operational. Watch this space! Want more info? You can get it here: https://lnkd.in/gNYQDdMb

We’re excited to share that our Enterprise Architecture (EA) team have won Forrester’s 2024 Enterprise Architecture Award! 🥳 We believe the Forrester’s Award reflects how our excellent EA practices contribute to our high business performance and drive both our internal and external value. In a nutshell, EA helps organisations to align business and technology, much like a city master plan guides the development of a city. Just as city planners create functional and sustainable spaces, enterprise architects design digital ecosystems, focusing on the larger organisational picture and long-term sustainability. As part of Contact’s digital transformation, EA plays a crucial role in managing risks through seamless business collaboration, driving cost reduction and improving customer and employee experiences through architecture principles. Our Chief Information Officer Iain Gauld, Head of Enterprise Architecture Martin Bigwood, and some of the EA team will be attending Forrester’s T&I Summit APAC 2024 in Sydney at the end of this month to share Contact’s story and information and community technology (ICT) transformation. They’ll be collecting the award then. Congratulations team – it’s awesome to have your efforts recognised when you’re usually the unsung heroes! 👏

Kia ora, Talofa, Bula, Nǐ hǎo, Namaste – these greetings are in just some of the languages you’ll hear in our three contact centres across Levin, Dunedin and Wellington.    Aotearoa is made up of a diverse group of people, and so too are our customers. We believe it’s important our customers can access the information they need in their first language to help feel informed, connected and empowered.     Many of our more than 200 Customer Service Representatives working in our contact centres are multilingual, speaking te reo Māori, Samoan and Hindi (to name just a few languages!). We also have the ability to support customers whose first language is not English by quickly accessing a translator and conferencing them into a customer call. This means we can support our customers in up to 300 different languages.     So, no matter what language our customers speak, we’ve got them covered.    Happy Tuvaluan Language Week -  Vaiaso o te Gana Tuvalu 🌸 #TuvaluLanguageWeek #VaiasooTeGanaTuvalu #UpholdYourLanguage #LanguageIsIdentity

Battery Banter: A lot has happened in a short time preparing for our new 100 megawatt battery at Glenbrook. The site has been cleared and our earthworks and civil contractor, Hick Bros Civil Construction Ltd, have begun levelling works of the main battery foundation area, construction of the temporary erosion and sediment control pond, and set up the site car park and laydown area. Our site office is now also set up! Check out the video below 👇 Once up and running, currently scheduled for March 2026, it will be the country's newest large-scale battery, the closest to the largest city, and the first Tesla Megapack 2 XL system in Aotearoa New Zealand. The battery will provide enough electricity to meet peak demand for 44,000 homes for over two hours – helping to keep Kiwis warm over the winter. ⚡

Engaging with people, building positive relationships, and supporting each other are key to successfully building a new power station says Kevin. As the Health Safety Wellbeing Supervisor at Te Huka 3, his focus is the team’s physical and mental wellbeing. Kevin has been working on the new geothermal power station since ground was broken on site in August 2022.  He describes his role as influencing people to do their job safely and effectively and he enjoys supporting team members and contractors to reach key milestones in the project.   “There can be big challenges in this type of job, but that also makes the rewards all the more enjoyable. It’s all about celebrating the wins – big or small”, says Kevin. He explains there’s a lot of hard mahi involved and it is a high-pressure, high-risk environment, but everyone leans in if someone needs a hand. “The team is always willing to step in if things start to get hard. “Each person’s wellbeing needs are unique. What fills up one person’s wellbeing cup is likely to be really different to someone else. We try to take time out of our busy schedules to connect with one another. There’s a diverse group of people working on Te Huka 3, so it’s great to be able to learn about people’s different backgrounds and beliefs,” says Kevin. Like other members of the team, Kevin’s dance card is pretty full and he’ll move onto another project once Te Huka 3 is up and running at the end of the year. He believes it’s important for everyone involved in projects to reflect on how far they have come and to be incredibly proud of the work they’ve done “Everyone is passionate about doing a good job, and getting the job done safely. They’re great people to work with.” Kevin is all about connecting with others, bringing them together and working as a community, which ties in with the spirit of this year’s Mental Health Awareness Week. Noho ora mai. #MHAWNZ

This week our CEO Mike Fuge sat down to talk with Helen Matterson for the ‘Shared Lunch’ podcast hosted by Sharesies. Mike talks about Contact’s proposed acquisition of renewable energy generation company Manawa Energy and provides a picture of what a combined portfolio of energy assets would look like. Click on the links below to listen/watch: 🎧 Spotify: https://lnkd.in/gX3Gm-w2 🎧 Apple: https://lnkd.in/g_Y_6mWy 📺 YouTube: https://lnkd.in/gyXXWF9z

Roxburgh Roundup: How are things tracking with our Roxburgh turbine upgrade? Here’s a quick update 💡 We’ve removed and dismantled the old turbine (images 1 and 2), and after receiving the first of four new turbines from Voith Hydro, we prepared and inspected all the components before starting the installation. Each component must be aligned to the existing equipment to ensure the unit operates as designed. Before installing the new turbine components, we carried out some maintenance on the scroll case and embedded components. Next, we will be installing the new turbine runner which also comes with new wicket gates, headcover, operating ring and servomotors. Scroll case? Wicket gates? In a nutshell, our Roxburgh (and Clyde) hydroelectric power station generates electricity by releasing water from the dam into the penstocks (image 3 and 4) which then passes around the scroll case (a snail shell shaped pipe that guides the water from the penstock to the wicket gates) before spinning the turbine. There are 20 wicket gates which control the amount of water that enters the turbine. The headcover (image 5) holds everything in place, whilst the operating ring and servomotors move the wicket gates. Once the new turbine is installed and ready to start spinning, the team will run commissioning tests followed by performance checks. This ensures the new turbine components are safe to operate on the NZ electricity grid. Here’s a few stats to illustrate the work involved: ⚡ 1 scroll case and turbine per generating unit ⚡ Each unit generates 40 MW ⚡ Each scroll case is located 43 metres below lake level ⚡ Each penstock is 5.5 meters in diameter ⚡ The turbine runner weighs 28.5 tonnes ⚡ A coupling bolt that holds the runner shaft to the generator can weigh up to 30kg and requires a hydraulic spanner to bolt into place. Kirk Pritchard John Clark

As part of our journey towards net zero energy generation emissions by 2035, our Stratford thermal power station in Taranaki recently took part in an innovative trial conducted by Kiwi company Captivate Technology which aims to have positive impacts on our environment and industry.  For several weeks in June, Captivate trialed a metal organic framework technology called MUF-16 on the Stratford Peaker Plant GT21 gas turbine. MUF-16 basically acts like a sponge, soaking up carbon dioxide (CO2) that is emitted out of the turbine, which would otherwise go into the atmosphere.  Once captured and cleaned, the CO2 can then be used in many ways such as for fuel, fertilizer, or keeping medical supplies cool during transportation. It’s an exciting opportunity as this technology would reduce waste emissions at our thermal sites and would help with a domestic supply of CO2. Following the trial demonstrating that the new technology can successfully capture CO2, we are looking to work with Captivate on further trials.  Captivate is a deep-tech start-up company based in New Zealand. They are currently scaling up their patented technology to remove CO2 from industrial emissions and we’re pleased to be supporting them. The images below show the Stratford GT21 peaker plant and the CO2 test rig.

Last night we celebrated with friends and colleagues at the New Zealand Energy Excellence Awards in Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland. These annual awards acknowledge achievement across our country’s energy sector and we were thrilled to take home the Wellbeing Award for our skin health programme. The judges said “The outcomes Contact can attribute to the programme are unarguable and wide-ranging. The judges really liked how the initiative that was born from field operations well-being concerns was expanded across the organisation and achieved equal outcomes of cancers detected and removed with office staff and referrals from other business areas.” We were also finalists in the Energy Retailer of the Year and Community Initiative of the Year; and Tim Edmonds, head of advisory at Simply Energy, was a finalist for Young Energy Professional of the Year. A huge thanks to our customers, stakeholders and the communities where we operate. Jan Bibby Mark Green Jane Cummings Chelsea Langman Skin Aware nib Group