Wind farms in Tasmania

Flinders Island wind farm

"Yes there are two wind turbines on Flinders Island. 1 x 55 kW unit installed in 88 and 1 x 25 kW unit installed in 96. These units are not owned by Hydro Tasmania, they are privately owned and Hydro Tasmania purchase's all the power they produce."

Photo acknowledgement: Peter Kempster

ABC on-line news, November 21, 2007 reported...

Hydro Tasmania has secured all the approvals it needs to build up to four wind turbines on Flinders Island. The turbines would produce between 0.9 and 3.4 megawatts of power and cut the the island's reliance on diesel by 30 per cent or about 350,000 litres annually. The Leader of Government Business in the Legislative Council, Doug Parkinson, says Hydro's plans are progressing well. "Hydro Tasmania has secured the development approval for up to four wind turbines on Flinders Island," he said. "Once wind turbine supply has been secured, the business case will be progressed for consideration by Hydro Tasmania's board."

A page by RISE, Research Institute for Sustainable Energy, also mentioned some wind power installed on Flinders Island in 1988 and a second stage in 1996.

I emailed Hydro Tasmania (webmaster@hydro.com.au) on 19th Dec. 2008 requesting more information; had not received a reply by 2009/03/19.

Huxley Hill wind farm

Also known as the King Island Wind Farm

In interesting feature of Huxley Hill is that it includes a 'vanadium redox flow battery' (see Wikipedia); this is capable of storing up to 800kWh of surplus energy and releasing it as required. This was insalled during stage 2.

I thank Peter Kempster, who lives on King Island, for some of the above information.

Huxley Hill wind farm is located at South Latitude 39.93° and East Longitude 143.87°

On Dec. 28th 2009, Sue Neals wrote in the Tasmanian Mercury that it "is finally under construction", that "So far, new roads into the vast Cape Portland farm estate have been constructed, giant concrete foundation pads for the towering wind turbines built, the wind farm's control building completed and some electricity cabling work commenced." She also wrote that "the financial viability of the Musselroe project remains in doubt"; it seems that it is suffering, along with many other renewable energy projects, from PM Rudd's dodgy solar credits scheme. The whole article is well worth reading.

On 2010/02/06 ABC online news carried an article stating that "About $35-million has been spent on pre-construction work but next week the $400-million development will grind to a halt. The State Government said there will be delays until the investment climate improves."

The wind farm will be in the NE extremity of Tasmania, about 20km NE of Gladstone and about 100km NE of Launceston.

Until a wind farm gets at least to the point where an application for approval has been submitted to the relevant authority it may be little more than wishfull thinking and is not worth covering in more detail than that below.

Wind farms that have been proposed in Tasmania