Green windfall

Port Lincoln Times
Tuesday 5/2/2008 Page: 3

THE Cathedral Rocks Wind Farm has produced 400 million kilowatt hours of green power - offsetting 40 million tonnes of carbon dioxide, the equivalent of taking over 9.2 million cars off the road for a year. The $160 million wind farm reached the milestone in January, clocking up 400 gigawatt hours since it starting producing electricity for the South Australian power grid in September 2005. To put this amount in perspective, facilities manager John Fannin said the average household would use about 150 kilowatt hours a quarter. "The wind farm is providing more than enough electricity to power Port Lincoln and surrounding districts, producing energy for about 35,000 homes every year," he said.

The wind farm also just received the independent international ISO 14001 environmental accreditation for its outstanding Environmental Management System. Mr Fannin said fine-tuning had made all 33 turbines very reliable with all of them fully operational. "Turbine reliability is at an all time high," he said. "We're regularly exceeding 97 per cent turbine availability, with hopes of exceeding 99 per cent in the future, which is very possible." Safety will be in focus with a mock rescue being held at the end of February involving local emergency services.

Green energy should become more prevalent under the new Federal Government, but the ongoing issues of lack of power infrastructure could mean Eyre Peninsula misses out on more wind farm opportunities. "I can see wind farms definitely on the increase in Australia with the change of Federal Government," Mr Fannin said. "But down here, unless infrastructure is upgraded, what you see is what you're going to get. "There are line upgrades happening, but they won't sufficiently increase capacity.

"There are wind farms companies wanting to build all the way up to Elliston, but they've all been on hold for some time." Mr Fannin said the Cathedral Rocks Wind Farm, a joint venture between Acciona Energy and Roaring 40s, had conserved over 2300 hectares of native vegetation under a heritage agreement at the wind farm site, located on private farming land. "The rehabilitation of the site has exceeded everyone's expectations with plants regenerating well, due to the removal of all stock from the wind farm site and ongoing rehabilitation work in the heritage areas," he said.