This weekend marks the official launch of the state’s biggest wind farm project, three months after the $750 million development changed hands.
This weekend marks the official launch of the state’s biggest wind farm project, three months after the $750 million development changed hands.
The Collgar wind farm, located 25km south-east of Merredin, will have a capacity of 206 megawatts, nearly doubling the state’s total production of wind power.
Early works commenced last September at Collgar, which will have 111 turbines erected at completion, with a further 16 turbines planned for a later date.
Collgar chief executive Alistair Craib said it would be the largest one-off development of a wind farm in the Southern Hemisphere to date, an achievement currently held by the Lake Bonney Wind Farm in South Australia, which has 99 turbines.
Mr Craib is heading up a newly appointed executive team, which will divide its time between the company’s head office in West Perth and the Merredin site.
Collgar is jointly owned by banking group UBS’s International Infrastructure Fund – its first ‘greenfield’ acquisition – and Australia’s largest super fund by members, Retail Employees Superannuation Trust.
Investec funded the project during the research and development stage, then sold it to UBS and REST last year.
“One of the concerns that was voiced by the community was that we [UBS and REST] were just going to flick it off in a few years and that’s certainly not the case,” Mr Craib said.
“The reality is that if the wind is there, then the farm will operate for a lot longer than the planned 25 years, assuming the grid can support it and that there’s still support for renewable energy.”
Mr Craib said the other major concern was the social and environmental impact: the turbine noise and shadow flickering, as well as potential electromagnetic interference. The advantage of the Merredin site is that it’s located a significant distance from any residences, so there’s “virtually no impact”.
The $750 million project is four months into its 25-month construction phase and is on track to erect the first turbine in January 2011. Once operational, the wind farm will employ between 12 and 20 people.
The major supplier to the project is Danish company Vestas, which won a $500 million contract to supply the wind turbines.
Mr Craib said the project was an attractive investment because of its locality to the existing energy grid – a matter of hundreds of metres, compared to hundreds of kilometres for other renewable energy sites.
“Plus it’s very flat terrain, which is great for a wind farm because you don’t get variations in the wind,” he said.
“On an average basis we’ll be generating electricity for 50 per cent of the time; compared to some of the European plants that are in the high teens, it’s a very stable resource.”
Western Power is building a substation at the site, which will be completed by May next year. Mr Craib said by that point Collgar would have erected 70 turbines and would start supplying electricity to the grid for testing.
While he was not willing to disclose the amount paid to Western Power, he said it was significantly less than other geothermal projects that are located a long way from the grid.
“To actually establish networks to those areas, it will cost a huge amount and there seems to be no decisive action taken by either political party to address this,” Mr Craib said.
“The $1 billion proposed by Labor to upgrade the networks to me seems like a step in the right direction, but it’s not really going to go very far.”
