$350m wind farm roaring

Launceston Examiner
Saturday 23/2/2008 Page: 1

THE future of the $350 million North-East Wind Farm at Cape Portland has finally been secured. The Labor Party's Mandatory Renewable Energy Target of 20 per cent by 2020 has given Roaring 40s the impetus to proceed with its Musselroe Project, and more projects across Tasmania are under investigation as the 12-year race to provide more environmentally sustainable power begins in earnest.

Roaring 40s Oceania construction manager David Mounter said yesterday that work should begin on the North-East project later this year, with Danish-made turbines to be shipped into the State later next year. Civil construction will begin first to prepare for the 80m towers, which are topped with blades that span 90m. Each tower is made up of 12 truckloads of material. Roaring 40s put in its development application to Dorset Council in 2004 and gained approval for up to 80 turbines, which will generate 140MW into the State's grid.

That is more than the Woolnorth project in the far North West, which generates 125MW. It will be more than enough power to provide electricity to 140,000 homes. Mr Mounter said the project would take two and a half years to finish and a peak workforce of 120 was anticipated. Mr Mounter said between $50 million and $80 million would be pumped into the Northern Tasmanian economy as a result of the project. "A few plans just need to be approved by State and federal environment regulators but we don't envisage any problems with them.," Mr Mounter said.

"We always had confidence that it would be built but we just didn't know when. The timing has been good with the federal target because our (council) permit hasn't expired." Confirmation of Roaring 40s dedication to Tasmania comes after the Labor Party promised during the federal election campaign that it would step-up the MRET after the previous Howard Government refused to extend it from the initial 2001 target of 9500 gigawatt-hours.

Kevin Rudd's plan will see that figure grow to 45,000 gigawatt-hours. The Musselroe project accounts for only 0.1 per cent of what is anticipated to be produced by 2020. No other development applications have been submitted for more wind farms across the State, but Roaring 40s staff were investigating a range of options.

"At the moment it's a case of `that's a windy hill' and `that's a windy hill'," Mr Mounter said. "Our wind data collection slowed down as the MRET scaled down and now that that is winding up again we are looking at our next reasonable option. "There would need to be a year's worth of wind monitoring, it would take a year to put together a DA, that can take a while to get approval with the comment phase and then it would take one year to get to construction, so any new farms are at least three years away." Victoria and South Australia were other states that the company would look into, Mr Mounter said.

Wind generation, the ability to connect to the electricity grid via Transend and environmental constrains would need to be taken into account for all new projects. Transend would need to upgrade its facilities at Woolnorth and Musselroe if those two wind farm projects were to expand any further. Roaring 40s also has two 50MW wind farms operating in China, with nine more under construction.