Esperance is an isolated town on the south coast of Western Australia with a population of approximately 12,500. It is a popular tourist destination.
Esperance is
the site of Australia's first wind farm - the 360kW Salmon Beach Wind Farm - which commenced operation in 1987 and operated successfully for nearly 15 years, but which was decommissioned in 2002. The Ten Mile Lagoon Wind Farm, comprising nine 225kW Vestas V27 wind turbines, was connected to the Esperance grid in 1993. This wind farm now operates in parallel with the 3.6MW Esperance Nine Mile Beach Wind Farm consisting of six ENERCON E40 600kW turbines, commissioned by D&WS in mid-2003.
The current power system comprises two wind farms (5.6MW total capacity) operating in parallel with the 30MW Esperance gas turbine based power station owned and operated by the Esperance Power Station Pty Ltd (a subsidiary of Burns & Roe Worley). The majority of the electricity on this system comes from these gas turbines.
The wind farm includes a control system based on a Master Controller, which talks directly with the gas turbine control system to manage the wind farm output. Due to the distance of the wind farms from the power station, the system incorporates sophisticated high reliability communications equipment using digital radio modems and fibre optic within the wind farms.
The wind farms generate about 22% of Esperance's electricity. Maximum instantaneous penetration is just over 65%.
See the Esperance brochure in the Downloads section for more information about this project.