Quote Originally Posted by Marilyn Munroe View Post
I recall in past years Huntly has had to shut down over summer because its resource consent to discharge cooling water into the Waikato River is suspened when the river water temperature rises above a certain level. Should the current situation continue and the water temp restriction come into force hillarity will ensue.

Boop boop de do
Marilyn
It used to be, and as far as I am aware still is that:

The discharge of cooling water into the river is limited by the temperature of the water measured [one km?] downstream of the station not exceeding 25C.

So if the upstream temperature is at or above that limit then generation is limited by the capacity of the onsite [re circulatory] cooling system which can handle, from memory, about 250MW of generation.