Energy sector feels the wind in its sails

Weekend Australian
Saturday 16/1/2010 Page: 7

THIS decade, Australia's windfarm industry expects to increase its employment almost 500% as the national renewable energy target, legislated last year, drives rapid development. The escalation of wind energy is one of three waves of change in electricity supply predicted by the Australian Energy Market Operator as it seeks to model national high-voltage transmission needs.

According to AEMO, the renewable target will drive a 450% increase in wind energy while the gas generators simultaneously will enter a golden period. The target scheme runs out of puff in 2020 it has a cap of 45,000 GW hours a year but combined cycle gas plants will become the preferred technology for meeting Australian power demand in the next two decades. Combined cycle gas turbine baseload generation is predicted to increase 10-fold in two decades.

The AEMO model suggests it will be about 2024 before the third technology wave makes its mark with large-scale geothermal development and carbon capture and sequestration processes enabling the coal generators to arrest their decline in Australian power supply. Meanwhile, the ball is with wind developers. Miles George, managing director of Infigen Energy, builders of the first largescale windfarm in NSW, recently told a Senate committee he expects 800 MWs of wind energy to be established each year of this decade.

George, whose Capital windfarm near Bungendore is contracted to sell its output to Sydney Water for the desalination plant due to be commissioned this summer, says a reasonable target long term for the wind sector would be to meet 15 to 20% of national electricity demand. Meanwhile, the Rudd government's RET should drive the wind sector's employment from 1600 people today to 7600 by the end of the decade, according to Clean Energy Council estimates. Overall, the council predicts the renewable energy industry will increase its employment in Australia from 10,370 people today to more than 24,000 in 2020.

The CEC says support for desalination projects by putting zero-emission power into the eastern seaboard grid to offset use of fossil fuels will be an important early factor for the wind industry. Apart from the 141MW committed by Infigen Energy to support Sydney Water, AGLis developing 524 MW of wind farms at Oaklands Hill in Victoria and Hallett in South Australia between now and 2012 for the SA water scheme.

Australia now has 49 wind farms carrying 962 turbines with a capacity of 1668MW. The CEC says there are 6000MW of wind energy projects proposed across Australia. The Australian Bureau of Agricultural Resource Economics sees an even more optimistic outlook for wind energy. In its latest review of electricity generation, ABARE records 10,672MW of wind farms undergoing feasibility studies in addition to 734MW of developments being built.

ABARE has 71 wind farms in its "less advanced projects" category. Fourteen are proposed for NSW, including the giant Silverton project near Broken Hill with a planned capacity of 1000MW, and 30 for Victoria. A further 17 are proposed for SA. Infigen Energy's George foresees a technology change further boosting Australia's wind rush. He told the Senate committee on fuel and energy that a typical windfarm turbine today has a capacity of 2MW and, while 3MW units are being brought in to operation, there are 6MW prototypes being tested. This will enable another substantial decrease in wind energy costs.