Turbine construction underway at Woolnorth

Circular Head Chronicle
Wednesday 1/11/2006 Page: 12

A NUMBER of 90 metre turbines have been built at the new Studland Bay windfarm at Woolnorth. The giant tower sections and blades are transported to the site by truck to be assembled using a crane with a 115 metre jib, the largest of its kind in the southern hemisphere.

In suitable weather, it takes a day to erect a turbine. "We're always watching the weather, we look at all the forecasts. We're lucky here because we've got Cape Grim [monitoring station]," said Roaring 40s senior project manager Michael Gilmore. "It's very important the wind is as calm as we can predict.

Obviously because we're on a windfarm it's usually quite windy out here." The crane also has inbuilt wind-monitoring technology. If wind speed exceeds 15 metres per second, the crane will automatically stop.

Before turbine building began, tower sites were determined by a process called "micro-siting". "It's quite an exact science to do with the topography of the land and prevailing wind conditions," Mr Gilmore said.

Turbines must be a distance of three times the diameter of the rotor away from each other to avoid "wake loss", or receiving disturbed air from a nearby turbine. The Vestas V90 turbines represent the latest in Danish wind technology. Standing 90 metres tall and weighing 270 tonnes, each turbine has three hollow carbon fibre blades.

"[Each blade] acts as a sail, it either catches the wind or shed the wind. Each of the blades can feather individually, Mr Gilmore said. "It's quite a big move forward that. It's a big help with energy, it's a big help with noise reduction." Mr Gilmore has worked on windfarm projects around the world, and has extensive knowledge of how farms are configured in other parts of the world.

Wind turbines are now a familiar feature of the landscape of a number of European countries. "It's common to have one or two turbines on your land, it's called `the farmer's pension', some farmers find [the noise] quite hypnotic," Mr Gilmore said. "Germany last year put in something like 400 turbines.

"Europe is very committed to wind." The United Kingdom's wind energy regime includes off-shore windfarms. The turbines are bolted into the bedrock on the sea floor. Advantages of offshore windfarms include access to undisturbed wind and minimal disruption to humans. "They actually stick out of the water," Mr Gilmore said. "The North Sea is like Bass Strait, it's very shallow. "If you see that on a misty day, it's surreal."