Wind well and truly mapped

Australian
Thursday 27/5/2010 Page: 4

WHEN you think of great sites for a wind farm, the southern coastline with its Roaring 40s gales comes to mind. Not Hughenden in outback Queensland, 376km southwest of Townsville and 519km east of Mount Isa. Yet this is one of the locations that wind energy development company, Windlab Systems, sees as a potential game-changer in the quest for compelling renewable energy projects.

"It's in an area that no one really would have thought to investigate for a wind resource," admits chief executive officer Mark Sinclair, who estimates the company's Kennedy wind farm project near Hughenden could ultimately supply between 600 and 1000MWs of clean electricity into the national grid.

Central to his confidence is the company's flagship product Windscape, which uses CSIRO atmospheric modelling technology to map broad regions for their wind resources and, in turn, allow the rapid and cost-effective selection of wind farm sites. Sinclair says Kennedy, which has the potential to handle about 280 wind turbines, and sites like it are significant given that communities in scenic and popular coastal locales are reluctant to turn over land to turbines. "You do have to look harder for opportunities when you get inland and further north, but they are still there," he says.

Challenges exist at Hughenden: there is no existing transmission line to shift energy on to the grid. However, discussions about a clean energy corridor between Townsville and Mount Isa offer hope that a $1.5 billion farm at Kennedy could be part of a new power system in the region. "It's got the potential to be an extremely large contributor to not only Queensland's but also Australia's requirements for renewable energy," Sinclair says.

Windlab Systems, set up in 2003, is a CSIRO spin-off that now boasts a portfolio of projects in Australia, North America, South Africa and New Zealand. In Australia its interests include two farms that are now under construction: Collgar 250km east of Perth and Oaklands Hill in the Southern Grampians in western Victoria. To date, Windlab Systems has typically identified wind farm sites and then brought in joint-venture partners such as Investec Bank and power company AGL Energy to prepare them for the construction phase.

With wind power estimated to represent only about 1% of the total generation of energy in the world, it is clear that there is room for growth. "It's still a very small part of the mix at the moment," Sinclair says. "Conventional wisdom says you can take wind in any small isolated system up to about 20% of generation, and you can manage the variable nature of the supply quite easily at that level."

Although getting wind farms operational is "a hard road" with venture capital at a premium in the wake of the global financial crisis, Sinclair says wind power is a stand-out option compared with other renewable energy sources. "In Australia we are fortunate that we have a good broad-base wind resource, and wind energy has proven to be the most economic and will continue to be the most economic form of renewable energy generation in the foreseeable future."

Wind power is viewed as one of the means by which Australia can meet its commitments under the MRET, or mandatory renewable energy target, a key element of the government response to climate change. It commits Australia to achieving a 20% share of renewables in Australia's electricity supply in 2020.

While Sinclair is quick to highlight the sector's potential, he believes the Rudd government's decision to delay the introduction of an emissions trading scheme is a blow and adds to industry frustrations over regulatory uncertainty in the sector. "It is very disappointing to see the ETS being shelved. I think that is going to have an impact in the industry." Sinclair notes that a typical wind farm project can require about $200 million and has a life cycle of approximately 25 years. "In order for investors and debt providers to make decisions they really need to have certainty over what is the course of the market for the next two decades."