Two WA wind farms are on the western coast north of this area: Coral Bay and Denham.

See also Wind farm by region.

One of the Albany turbines at sunset

Verve Energy's Albany Wind Farm is twelve kilometres west of Albany and 400km SSE of Perth. An interactive map showing its location and giving directions on how to get there is available on ExplorOz.

It is on a very scenic section of the south coast of Western Australia. There is a parking area, several viewing areas, and a few kilometres of pleasant walking trails at the base of several of the turbines. There is a trail connecting to the Bibbulmum track.

Good views can be seen of places as far away as the Porongorup and Stirling ranges from one of the hill lookouts.

The Albany Wind Farm is owned by Verve Energy, from whom came much of the data for this section.

Milton Evans, Mayor of Albany, has said that the existing wind farm generates about 50% of Albany's electricity. (He also said that there was the possibility of wave power development.) With the new (Grasmere) turbines wind could supply up to 80% of Albany's power needs.

Map from minutes of meeting of Shire of Badgingarra

An extension of Planning Approval was granted by the Shire of Dandaragan on 2010/11/11. On the PA it was stated that constuction was expected to take around 16 to 20 months, making the earliest possible completion date about March of 2012.

The proponents say that "The turbines will be situated on previously cleared farm land and have minimal environmental impact during and after the construction phase. Some turbine sites may require minor vegetation clearing however this will be avoided wherever possible." The Development Application also state that the project is strongly supported by the relevant landowners. The minimum set-back from residences is 1km.

Griffin has a Net page on the wind farm.

The Development Application states that most of the winds are from the south and south-east, with less, but signifacant winds, from the east and north-east.

Location Acknowledgement: http://www.collgarwindfarm.com.au/

There is a Collgar Wind Farm Net page for the project. First power exported into the WA South West Interconnected System (SWIS) was on 2011/05/14.

Windlab also have a Net page on the farm (with links to the above site).

15 personnel will be employed perminantly for maintenance of the farm.

I must thank Alistair Craib and Carmen Hantar for some of the information in this section. Any errors present are probably mine.

On the grapevine, January 2010:

• Suzlon tried to get the contract for this project, but couldn't raise the money because they had too much debt for the banks to be interested.
• Vestas won the contract and are to use 1.86MW turbines with the same size rotors as on the 3MW turbines at Waterloo in SA; winds at Merredin are weaker than those at Waterloo. (See wind resource map of Australia.)

Wind Prospect, the proposers, have a Net site intended to inform the public about the project. They hope to receive a planning approval decision in late 2010.

It seems to me that the above statistics incude all three wind farms, but Wind Prospect's Net site is ambiguous.

Denmark Wind Farm

Federal Environment Minister, Peter Garrett, announced on 2008/10/16 funding of $1.4 million dollars for this project.

While there is little activity apparent on this project (as of January 2011) I believe the proponents (who are connected with the Mount Barker Wind Farm, currently under construction) have confidence that it will go ahead.

Interestingly community wind farms are rare in Australia, they are much more common in some European countries, including (ironically) Denmark. Apart from this project and the Mount Barker Wind Farm, I only know of one other community proposal in Australia, that is the Hepburn Wind Farm in Victoria.

Esperance wind farms

Salmon Beach Wind Farm

The last remaining in-situ Salmon Beach turbine in the foreground, some of the Nine Mile Beach turbines are visible in the background. Photo taken from a lookout at the south of Esperance.

Salmon Beach turbine on display in Esperance

Salmon Beach Wind Farm, the first in Australia, no longer operates but two turbines have been retained for historical interest.

The farm operated from 1987 for nearly 15 years, but was decommissioned in 2002 due to urban encroachment, the age of the turbines and the fact that there were by then much larger and more cost-effective units on the market.

The wind farm consisted of six turbines each of 60kW capacity.

Wind home Top Index

Nine Mile Beach Wind Farm

Nine Mile Beach turbines

Ten Mile Lagoon Wind Farm

Ten Mile Lagoon turbines on left. Some of the Nine Mile Beach turbines are barely visible in the distance on the right.

Flat Rocks is described in the DA as being about 35km SE of Kojonup. The proposed wind farm will be between the Kojonup-Broomehill road and the Tambellup West road; the map in the DA indicates that the project will be around 20km SE of Kojonup. It will be about 125km north of Albany and 260km SE of Perth.

An 80m high wind monitoring mast was installed on the site in May 2009. The DA states that "Wind data has since been analysed and shown the site has an economic wind resource and suitable surrounding landscapes to support a 150MW wind farm." Up to four wind monitoring masts are proposed.

It is intended that power from the farm will either go into a new 220kV line proposed for a new mine, or will join the existing 'SWIS' line at the Kojonup Substation via a purpose-built new 132kV line.

The DA states that "Information sessions have been held for immediate neighbours on two occasions", 2008/07/06 and 2010/09/17; and that "Broader community meetings are planned when all environmental impact studies have been completed later this year (December 2010)."

My impression is that the source of the needed money is not yet known.

Update 2011/12/12 Craig Carter of Verve Energy gave me the following update: "All six Enercon 2.3MW E-70 wind turbines have been installed are are undergoing trial operation. All are running but power is limited to 5MW in total until the communications and control systems are completed in early 2012. The Grasmere Wind Farm (13.8MW) is next to the Albany Wind Farm and the two appear as one wind farm. The only difference is that the new turbines are a slightly darker grey colour and the new Enercon blades are an aerofoil shape to the hub. The new farm is on higher ground and will have a slightly better capacity factor as a consequence. I think that the Albany community will call the two wind farms the Albany Wind Farm.

Verve have a Net page on the project. It includes a live Web cam that can be controlled by the viewer; fascinating stuff!

This wind farm consists of two 600kW Enercon E-40 wind turbines and is part of a hybrid wind-diesel power system. The wind turbines supply around 40% of Hopetoun's electricity.

The ABC again reported on the wind farm on 28th July 2008 saying that it had been opened, its total cost was Au$5m ($2m of which came from the Commonwealth Government), and that it was expected to "meet a third of Kalbarri's power needs and offset about 5 000 tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions a year."

Powercorp were also involved in the development of this project, supplying voltage control equipment.

Kalbarri also has a 20kW photovoltaic system, consisting of 256 panels. The angle of the panels used to be automatically adjusted six time a day to follow the sun as it crossed the sky, but the panels were later fixed in a single position.

A Planning Application was submitted to the City of Geraldton-Greenough before July 2009. The project won a 30-year operating licence from WA's Economic Regulation Authority in late March 2011.

The project is being built 40km south-east of Geraldton.

There were objections from the owners of the nearby Emu Downs Wind Farm on the grounds that the power grid did not have sufficient capacity for another wind farm in the area, but these were over-ruled.

The Engineer (on the Net) carried an article on 2011/06/21 stating that "A consortium including US conglomerate General Electric (GE) and Australian company Leighton Contractors has received a contract, worth [Aus]$130m, to supply and install 22 GE 2.5-100 wind turbines for the Mumbida Wind Farm." GE will also provide mainenance for ten years.

Pacific Hydro's page on this wind farm can be accessed via their home page.

It is expected that the project will have an operational life of 30 years.

Rottnest Island turbine

This wind farm, consisting of a single Enercon E-40 turbine and belonging to the Rottnest Island Authority, is situated on the popular tourism island about fifteen kilometres off the coast at Perth. The project cost was Aus$3 million.

Craig Carter of Verve Energy informed me by email on 2011/04/04 that "Verve Energy was the principal contractor for the project to install the wind turbine, re-automate the existing diesel power station, add two 320kW low load diesels to increase wind penetration and to automate the control of the desal plant to use excess wind energy for water production."

According to the Rottnest Island Authority, the wind turbine produces about 35% of the power needed on the island. Wind turbines had been tried unsuccessfully some years ago, but until the installation of the current one, the island had been reliant on diesel-generated power.

Sometimes called Alinta Wind Farm

This wind farm has the, so far as I know, otherwise unheard of capacity factor of 47%. This means that the amount of electricity generated is 47% of the rated capacity of the wind farm. A more typical capacity factor is 30%; 33% is the average for most Eastern Australian wind farms. Miles George of Babcock and Brown Wind Partners also informed me that this c.f. is the best for all of B&B's 79 wind farms.

If and when these wind farms look likely to be built, and as I get more information, I will write them up in more detail. If any readers have information concerning these wind farms I would appreciate a note, my email address is at the top of this page.

Until a wind farm gets at least to the point where an application for approval has been submitted to the relevant authority it may be little more than wishfull thinking and is not worth covering in more detail than that below.

Wind farms that have been proposed in WA

Links

Other links are in appropriate places throughout the text of this page.