Wind Farms
As of October 2010, there were 52 wind farms of greater than 100 kW capacity operating in Australia. The Waubra Wind Farm near Ballarat, Victoria, completed in 2009, was the largest wind farm in the southern hemisphere, consisting of 128 turbines spread over 173 km2 and rated at 192 MW, however in terms of generating capacity Lake Bonney Wind Farm near Millicent, South Australia was the largest with 239.5 MW, despite only having 99 turbines. These figures were set to be surpassed by the Macarthur Wind Farm at Macarthur, Victoria, scheduled to open in 2013 with a capacity of 420 MW.
By generating capacity, the eleven largest wind farms in Australia were:
| No. | Project | State | Capacity (MW) |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Lake Bonney Wind Farm | South Australia | 240 |
| 2 | Collgar Wind Farm | Western Australia | 204 |
| 3 | Portland Wind Farm | Victoria | 195 |
| 4 | Waubra Wind Farm | Victoria | 192 |
| 5 | Hallett Wind Farm | South Australia | 166 |
| 6 | Capital Wind Farm | New South Wales | 140.7 |
| 7 | Woolnorth Wind Farm | Tasmania | 140 |
| 8 | Snowtown Wind Farm | South Australia | 99 |
| 9 | Wattle Point Wind Farm | South Australia | 91 |
| 10 | Walkaway Wind Farm | Western Australia | 90 |
| 11 | Emu Downs Wind Farm | Western Australia | 80 |
Australia's first commercial wind farm, Salmon Beach Wind Farm near Esperance in Western Australia operated for 15 years from 1987, but was decommissioned due to urban encroachment; it has been replaced by Ten Mile Lagoon Wind Farm and Nine Mile Beach Wind Farm. In August 2009, The Age newspaper reported that the first of three new large-scale wind farming projects to offset Australia's power-hungry desalination plants would be going ahead.
Read more about this topic: Wind Power In Australia
Famous quotes containing the words wind and/or farms:
“By measure. It was word and note,
The wind the wind had meant to be
A little through the lips and throat.
The aim was song the wind could see.”
—Robert Frost (1874–1963)
“We noticed several other sandy tracts in our voyage; and the course of the Merrimack can be traced from the nearest mountain by its yellow sand-banks, though the river itself is for the most part invisible. Lawsuits, as we hear, have in some cases grown out of these causes. Railroads have been made through certain irritable districts, breaking their sod, and so have set the sand to blowing, till it has converted fertile farms into deserts, and the company has had to pay the damages.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)