Hydro Tasmania in $2 Billion Bid To Build Australia's Largest Wind Farm

Oliver Wagg, Correspondent
November 28, 2012 | 5 Comments

Tasmania's King Island is famous for its cheese, lobster and beef. Now it is set to become the home to Australia's biggest wind farm.

Hydro Tasmania wants to build a 600MW wind farm consisting of around 200 turbines, which if approved would transmit more than 5 percent of Australia’s total 2020 renewable energy target into the national grid via a high-voltage direct current underwater cable across Bass Strait to Australia’s state of Victoria.

Initial consultation with the island’s community will begin immediately to seek their feedback over the next three months as part of the pre-feasibility stage. The support of King Islanders is crucial for the project to proceed, the state-owned utility said.

For the past 15 months, Hydro Tasmania has been assessing the wind farm concept on the island to utilize one of the best wind resources in the world, the prevailing Roaring Forties. Work done to date indicated it was broadly feasible from a technical, economic and environmental perspective and the Tasmanian government has expressed its strong support for the project proceeding to the consultation stage.

Estimated to cost around A$2 billion ($2.1 billion), the project comes after the company announced the construction of a A$46 million prototype off-grid power plant that combines solar panels, wind turbines, biodiesel, and energy storage technology.

"While sitting in the path of the world-class wind resource that is the Roaring 40s makes King Island the perfect location for such a project, it is important to emphasise that it is very early days,” company chair David Crean said.

“The project will only proceed to full feasibility if the majority of King Islanders are in favour. That is why we are embarking on a consultation process that aims to set a high standard nationally for engaging with local communities on major renewable energy projects,” he added.

The proposed wind farm – Taswind – would produce approximately 2400 gigawatt-hours of renewable energy for the national market.

The country’s renewable energy industry body, the Clean Energy Council, hailed the proposal as a “welcome display of leadership by one of the industry’s major players”.

“Australia’s southern coastline has some of the strongest winds in the world. We should be making better use of this world-leading renewable energy resource and it’s excellent to see Hydro Tasmania launching a project which is aiming to do just that,” chief executive David Green said.

The proposal comes two years into the right-leaning Liberal-National Coalition came to power in Victoria and virtually killed off any new wind farm development across the state with strict new planning regulations.

If Taswind is approved by the community and government, construction is expected to start in 2017 for a 2019 completion date.

AGL Energy’s 420 MW Macarthur wind farm in Victoria is expected to be the largest in the southern hemisphere when it is fully operating early next year.

Lead image: Commonwealth of Australia via Shutterstock

5 Comments

Paul Hanly
December 3, 2012

This is a project proposed for a small island near a bigger island that has little industry and virtually no coal supply but lots of hydro power. Look at a map and read up on Basslink. King Island is nowhere near the Bass Link connection points. It is effectively an offshore wind platform and the field would need to be big enough to have a wind farm large enough to support the costs of the relevant undersea cable links.

There is a lot of debate abut where the electricity generated could be used, what infrastructure would have to be built and at what cost and what the cost per KwH at the consumer's premises would be. Tasmania is not a highly industrialised island, has mainly hydro power and transmission losses to industrialised, brown coal using Victoria would be high.

This project needs to be considered only by including identification of the customers (wholesale level), transmission costs to their customers and then working backwards to determine the economics of the project based on what is left for the wind farm project.

ANONYMOUS
December 2, 2012

"No wind turbines built anywhere" as opposed to 200 foot tall smoke stacks, fracking rigs, and cooling towers. I am sure you benefit from one of these so why single out wind?

tom clark
November 30, 2012

john-ralphs - Almost every wind farm starts off by claiming 50% - even 33% sound awfull high - most projects start of at about 27% that slowly drops off about 1% per yr due to wear and tear.
The reason "consultation" never works is because the companies employ snake oil salesmen who don't know what it is to tell the truth, because if they did there would be no wind turbines built anywhere.
As for complaints - I know of many land owners who want out of their contracts even before the turbines are built when they learn they have been lied to - also there are many Landowners or members of their families get sick but they have signed a Gag clause in their contract that stops them speaking out.
Across the world wind industry is a sad industry with absolutely no morals - "follow the money" is what they live by.

JOHN RALPHS
November 30, 2012

Having lived in the roaring 40s near a wind farm, I can testify how strong and how often the wind blows, it is pretty much all the time. The wind farm had a capacity factor of 33% which is still lower than ~50% they are talking about here; 50% capacity factor could be possible but I agree it is unlikely. Consultation never works because not everyone is fairly compensated, you never here the land owners who are getting the payouts complain. Just the neighbors who are still impacted and get nothing. The current consultation systems is flawed and divides communities, a fairer method of assessment, consultation and compensation needs to be developed.

tom clark
November 29, 2012

The over exaggerations (mistruths)are being stated already -I assume the 2400 GWH claim is for a year when about two thirds of that is a lot more probable ie 1600 GWH.
Also quote"that is why we are embarking on a consultation process that aims to set a high standard nationally for engaging with local communities on major renewable energy projects".I can just imagine.
Seems I've heard that from elsewhere maybe in Australia or New Zealand or Scotland or England or Wales or Ireland or Canada or United States or most likely in all of the above - and for some strange reason it never seems to work out that way - I think we all know why.- does snake oil ring a bell.

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Oliver Wagg

Independent journalist with a background in sustainable business and ethical finance, the renewable and low-emission energy sectors, climate-change science and policy and the not-for-profit sector.