The Emu Downs Wind Farm () is a 79.2 MW

wind farm A wind farm, also called a wind park 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 turbines covering an exten ...

in Western Australia. It was a 50:50 joint development between Griffin Energy and

Stanwell Corporation Stanwell Corporation is a Queensland Government-owned corporation (GOC), the State's largest electricity generator producing more than a third of Queensland's energy needs. It's also one of the top three energy generators in Australia. Stanwel ...

. The site is approximately 200 kilometres north of

Perth Perth () is the list of Australian capital cities, capital city of Western Australia. It is the list of cities in Australia by population, fourth-most-populous city in Australia, with a population of over 2.3 million within Greater Perth . The ...

, near

Cervantes Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra ( ; ; 29 September 1547 (assumed) – 22 April 1616 NS) was a Spanish writer widely regarded as the greatest writer in the Spanish language and one of the world's pre-eminent novelists. He is best known for his no ...

. 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 wind power, converts the kinetic energy of wind into electrical energy. , hundreds of thousands of list of most powerful wind turbines, large turbines, in installations known as wind farms, were generating over ...

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 occur ...

'' 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 approximately 20% of the water area of Earth#Surface, Earth's surface. It is bounded by Asia to the north, Africa to the west and Australia (continent), ...

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 purchased Stanwell Corporation's 50% shareholding. In June 2011, the wind farm was acquired by the APA Group 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 Synergy is an interaction or cooperation giving rise to a whole that is greater than the simple sum of its parts (i.e., a non-linear addition of force, energy, or effect). The term ''synergy'' comes from the Attic Greek word συνεργία ' f ...

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 SCADA
to 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