The Emu Downs Wind Farm () is a 79.2 MW
wind farm
A wind farm or wind park, also called a wind power station or wind power plant, is a group of wind turbines in the same location used to produce electricity. Wind farms vary in size from a small number of turbines to several hundred wind turb ...
in Western Australia. It was a 50:50 joint development between Griffin Energy and
Stanwell Corporation. The site is approximately 200 kilometres north of
Perth
Perth is the capital and largest city of the Australian state of Western Australia. It is the fourth most populous city in Australia and Oceania, with a population of 2.1 million (80% of the state) living in Greater Perth in 2020. Perth i ...
, near
Cervantes
Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra (; 29 September 1547 (assumed) – 22 April 1616 Old Style and New Style dates, NS) was an Early Modern Spanish writer widely regarded as the greatest writer in the Spanish language and one of the world's pre-emin ...
. Construction of the $180 million project commenced in November 2005, and the project was commissioned in October 2006.
Emu Downs consists of 48 Vestas
wind turbine
A wind turbine is a device that converts the kinetic energy of wind into electrical energy. Hundreds of thousands of large turbines, in installations known as wind farms, now generate over 650 gigawatts of power, with 60 GW added each yea ...
s (each with 1.65 MW generating capacity), a substation, interconnection to the main 132 kV electricity grid, administration and stores buildings, and a network of access roads. The wind farm is close to the coast, with a good quality wind resource that has increased wind speeds and reliability aligning with periods for peak power demand.
The prevailing wind blows from the east in the mornings and the ''
Fremantle Doctor
The Fremantle Doctor, the Freo Doctor, or simply The Doctor, is the Western Australian vernacular term for the cooling afternoon sea breeze that occurs during summer months in south west coastal areas of Western Australia. The sea breeze occurs ...
'' from the west in the afternoons.
The wind farm provides electricity to the grid. to the south there is the
Perth Seawater Desalination Plant, and turns water from the
Indian Ocean
The Indian Ocean is the third-largest of the world's five oceanic divisions, covering or ~19.8% of the water on Earth's surface. It is bounded by Asia to the north, Africa to the west and Australia to the east. To the south it is bounded by t ...
into nearly 152 million litres (40 million gallons) of drinking water per day.
Emu Downs is accredited under the Australian Government's ''Renewable Energy (Electricity) Act 2000'' and as a Green Power Generator by the Sustainable Energy Development Authority.
In November 2007,
Transfield Services
Broadspectrum, formerly known as Transfield Services, was an Australian and New Zealand company that provided infrastructure maintenance services. Formerly listed on the Australian Securities Exchange, and later owned by Ferrovial, it was the ...
purchased Stanwell Corporation's 50% shareholding.
In June 2011, the wind farm was acquired by the
APA Group APA Group may refer to:
* APA Group (Australia), natural gas pipeline and electricity company
* APA Group (Japan), a hotel group
See also
* APA (disambiguation)
{{disambiguation ...
for $170 million from the failed Griffin Group.
When APA group bought Emu Downs, it realised that there is usually a drop in output in the middle of the day as the wind changes. To balance that and achieve better utilisation of transmission infrastructure, APA installed the 20MW
Emu Downs Solar Farm on the adjacent site. Its peak output is during the time when the wind farm is not at full capacity, so no additional capacity was needed in the substation or grid connection point. The solar farm began operation in December 2017.
The output of both the solar and wind farms is contracted to
Synergy until 2030.
The adjacent 130MW
Badgingarra Wind Farm was completed in 2019, and has higher
capacity factor
The net capacity factor is the unitless ratio of actual electrical energy output over a given period of time to the theoretical maximum electrical energy output over that period. The theoretical maximum energy output of a given installation is def ...
due to newer components.
Operations
AEMO records begin in September 2006 for the wind farm. The generation table use
AEMO Facility SCADAto obtain generation values for each month. Emu Downs's code is EDWFMAN_WF1, so that is used as part of a SUMIF operation (shown below) on the table to get the total. Note that each month's values start 8 hours into the respective month and extend 8 hours into the next month.
Note: Asterisk indicates power output was limited during the month.
References
External links
*
{{Energy in Western Australia
Energy infrastructure completed in 2006
Wheatbelt (Western Australia)
Wind farms in Western Australia
2006 establishments in Australia