New Victorian wind farm 'largest in Southern Hemisphere'

New Victorian wind farm 'largest in Southern Hemisphere'

www.abc.net.au

A 140 turbine wind farm costing $1 billion will be built in Victoria's south-west.

AGL Energy and Meridian Energy have entered into binding contracts to build the farm at Macarthur, south of Hamilton.

It will be the biggest wind farm of its type in the southern hemisphere.

The Victorian Government says the wind farm will create 400 direct jobs during the construction phase.

The farm will generate 420 megawatts of electricity, which is enough to power 220,000 homes.

It is expected to start operating in 2013.

(visit the link for the full news article)


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For me wind power rules the alternative energy choices we have,just watching those big turbines pumping out amps is a sight of how simple and clean our power needs can be met.Forget about doing it to save the planet from pollution or human induced climate change,this is just common sense.Of course someone will complain that its to noisy or a rare parrot will fly into one and get concussion,well deal with it.If only we took the wind path years ago things might have been different.I have a couple of small turbines at home and watching them spin and charge my batteries is very satisfying.

www.abc.net.au
(visit the link for the full news article)
www.youtube.com...


[edit on 12-8-2010 by 12voltz]

Yeah I heard this today aswell, nothing but good news, and with any luck Adam Bandt will win the seat of Melbourne too.

I might have to move south.

Wind is without a doubt the cheapest renewable generation type (excluding hydro), with costs that are reasonably close to new fossil fuel generation - only without the external costs to our health, and the environment. It is also probably the electrical energy source that can be expanded the fastest. Solar on the other hand, is 3 times as expensive and produces ten times the emissions during manufacture compared to wind. That being said, wind does have limitations - it's an inheritable intermittent source of electricity, and the economics get progressively worse as wind penetration rises, because then at times it will be producing too much energy which will need to be spilled), and at other times too little (and may require inefficient simple cycle gas turbines to back it up). Hopefully careful planning will take place to minimize these limitations....

[edit on 12/8/2010 by C0bzz]

reply to post by C0bzz


I agree that wind has its limitation's but combined with a few solar panels ,you can have the best of both worlds,I am not in Vic but i'm guessing AGL and Meridian are a couple of big energy contractors in that state,so if they are making big commitments like this it can only be a good investment for them .Lets hope it catches on and people can see its not just a novelty.I am not a greenie i just believe in doing things without relying on governments to do them for me.Ten years without a power bill is a good thing.

reply to post by ghostsoldier

I take it Adam is the local member for the greens ,If they get some seats they should really push for more projects like this ,that would renew my confidence in politicians in general.

reply to post by 12voltz


Solar panels are completely uneconomic, for one unit of money, three units of wind (or Nuclear) could be built instead of one unit of solar. If it was economic then it wouldn't need an average feed-in tariff of 46 cents per kilowatt hour in Europe. Additionally, solar panels throughout their lifetime only generate 1.6 times the power that was originally put in, and on average they generate about 200 grams of carbon dioxide per kilowatt hour (from manufacture). The newer combined cycle natural gas plants put out 450 grams of co2 per kilowatt hour, generate electricity at a quarter of the cost, and are actually reliable. Wind is at 20 grams of CO2 per kilowatt hour, Nuclear is at 50 grams of Co2 per kilowatt hour. The only advantage that solar has, is that it generates electricity when it's most required, rather than whenever with wind. Of course, I'm talking about broadly here, I'm sure there are exceptions.

[edit on 12/8/2010 by C0bzz]

There's already something like 1500MW (1.5GW) of installed wind turbines in eastern Oz, and WA has its own installations as well but not part of the national grid due to the distance. The main problem with wind is it can't be considered a reliable energy source in that it won't necessarily be at peak output during times of peak demand but with more & more installations spread out across the country the diversity factor gets better all the time.

It still happens that the 1500MW+ of wind generation drops off to nothing in a relatively short time like 30 minutes or less and you need to have that capacity in idle but online base load stations (IE thermal) to cover it and prevent the possibility of load-shedding so wind isn't quite the longterm solution but we're getting closer I believe. You can't start up a thermal station from standstill in 30 minutes, it takes more like 24 hours or thereabouts. Natural gas turbines and hydro currently help to fill those gaps.

[edit on 12/8/2010 by Pilgrum]

Originally posted by Pilgrum
There's already something like 1500MW (1.5GW) of installed wind turbines in eastern Oz, and WA has its own installations as well but not part of the national grid due to the distance. The main problem with wind is it can't be considered a reliable energy source in that it won't necessarily be at peak output during times of peak demand but with more & more installations spread out across the country the diversity factor gets better all the time.

It still happens that the 1500MW+ of wind generation drops off to nothing in a relatively short time like 30 minutes or less and you need to have that capacity in idle but online base load stations (IE thermal) to cover it and prevent the possibility of load-shedding so wind isn't quite the longterm solution but we're getting closer I believe. You can't start up a thermal station from standstill in 30 minutes, it takes more like 24 hours or thereabouts. Natural gas turbines and hydro currently help to fill those gaps.

[edit on 12/8/2010 by Pilgrum]

source: windfarmperformance.info...



I'm not voting greens because they want to end Uranium mining, despite that it fuels enough reactors to power about 60 gigawatt's of Nuclear capacity, constantly, which is double the national electricity market peak demand, or enough electricity to power France. I really don't want coal, or even natural gas to replace any of that. Oh, and they want to shut down a facility that produces cancer treatment medicine, the reasoning for this is based on pseudo-scientific nonsense.

Additionally, there was a report named 'Zero Carbon Australia – Stationary Energy Plan' launched recently by an environmentalist group in Australia, that detailed a supposed way of getting to zero emissions by 2020., but anyway, the report is irresponsible as the goals are completely unrealistic and as such detracts from real solutions. Don't know if anyone here has seen it, but anyway, here's a critique:

‘Zero Carbon Australia – Stationary Energy Plan’ – Critique

The ZCA2020 Stationary Energy Plan has significantly underestimated the cost and timescale required to implement such a plan.

Our revised cost estimate is nearly five times higher than the estimate in the Plan: $1,709 billion compared to $370 billion. The cost estimates are highly uncertain with a range of $855 billion to $4,191 billion for our estimate.

The wholesale electricity costs would increase nearly 10 times above current costs to $500/MWh, not the $120/MWh claimed in the Plan.

The total electricity demand in 2020 is expected to be 44% higher than proposed: 449 TWh compared to the 325 TWh presented in the Plan.

bravenewclimate.com...

bravenewclimate.com...

[edit on 12/8/2010 by C0bzz]

reply to post by C0bzz


Forget about what it costs or how much energy is needed to make solar panels,It doesnt matter its not going to alter any climate change man made or otherwise, If its true its a done deal anyway.Its about giving people the freedom to not be reliant or a burden on a system that makes you feel warm and safe. People can Burn as much power as they want,i couldnt care less.Personally i get my satisfaction from self sufficiency and i just dig wind turbines.

The problem still is that sticking a boiler next to a coal mine is by far the cheapest source of energy and carbon taxes are the only thing that can make alternatives look even semi-attractive. The only way we'll see cleaner energy replacing thermal is by raising energy prices skyhigh compared to what they are now.