Wairakei Geothermal Steam Field
Wairakei Steam Field
It was early 1993, and I had just completed my BE (Mech), but still needed to add up hours working in engineering roles to gain my degree. After contacting a lot of companies, I got to work for the Wairakei Geothermal Powerstation. It was a pivotal experience. It had been a trying degree – not difficult per-say, I managed to pass it with last night cramming, but although I have always thought of myself as an engineer, I really didn’t enjoy much of the degree itself (with the exception of metallurgy), and in hindsight perhaps I should have taken a different path.
Working at the powerstation, it really demonstrated what I was working out from the degree, that so much of engineering is pencil pushing, and not physical. It pretty much assured that I will never take on such a roll (and these days I have forgotten so much, like so many do once the degree is over, that I’d have to retrain again….don’t think so!) I felt completely out of place in the office, not knowing what to do, or what was expected of me. So when I got some time to spend in the field, it was a much better fit. Practical – swinging sledgehammers, not calculators.
In the Navy, this was repeated again where the best time I had was the year I spent working in the boiler room of the (steam-powered) warship – punching sprays, maintaining the plant, etc – a great year.
The steam field is where bores extract naturally occurring geothermal water & steam, which is then piped to the power station. The water that comes up is superheated – under pressure its temperature is above the boiling point at atmospheric pressure. This water is allowed to flash to steam, which billows across the landscape. The large chimneys are a muffler, to minimise the sound of this.
Stu's Darkroom 