Mount Emerald Wind Farm is a 180 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 ...

situated on Mount Emerald, in Arriga,

Shire of Mareeba The Shire of Mareeba is a Local government in Australia, local government area at the base of Cape York Peninsula in Far North Queensland, inland from Cairns, Queensland, Cairns. The shire, administered from the town of Mareeba, Queensland, Mare ...

Queensland Queensland ( , commonly abbreviated as Qld) is a States and territories of Australia, state in northeastern Australia, and is the second-largest and third-most populous state in Australia. It is bordered by the Northern Territory, South Austr ...

, Australia. It is approximately 8 km WNW of Tolga, and 49 km SW of

Cairns Cairns (; ) is a city in the Cairns Region, Queensland, Australia, on the tropical north east coast of Far North Queensland. In the , Cairns had a population of 153,181 people. The city was founded in 1876 and named after William Cairns, Sir W ...

. The project is a joint venture between Port Bajool (land owner) and

RATCH-Australia RATCH-Australia Corporation (RAC) is an Australian electricity generation company. It is a subsidiary of RATCH Group (formerly known as Ratchaburi Electricity Generating Holding Company), a public company listed on the Stock Exchange of Thailand ...

(wind farm developer and operator). RATCH-Australia bought the project from Transfield Services in July 2011. The wind farm incorporates 53 turbines.

Construction

Approval from the state government came in April 2015. Federal government approval happened in November 2015, subject to 35 conditions aimed at protecting

native species In biogeography, a native species is indigenous to a given region or ecosystem if its presence in that region is the result of only local natural evolution (though often popularised as "with no human intervention") during history. The term is equi ...

. The site was formerly used as a military training area in

World War II World War II or the Second World War (1 September 1939 – 2 September 1945) was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War II, Allies and the Axis powers. World War II by country, Nearly all of the wo ...

so the site had to be carefully inspected to find any unexpoded ordnance; several were found and safely destroyed.

Operations

The wind farm registered its first grid output in August 2018 and reached maximum output in January 2019. The electricity network around the wind farm is generally constrained; this has an impact on the total amount of electricity it can receive from the wind farm. Studies are being undertaken to increase the capacity of the network using technologies such as

synchronous condenser In electrical engineering, a synchronous condenser (sometimes called a syncon, synchronous capacitor or synchronous compensator) is a DC-excited synchronous motor, whose shaft is not connected to anything but spins freely. Its purpose is not to c ...

s and grid-scale batteries.

Environmental impact

Environmental groups have claimed that the construction of roads and bases for the wind turbines caused significant destruction of the formerly untouched wilderness.

Photo gallery

File:Mount Emerald Wind Farm Turbines.jpg, Multiple Wind turbines File:Mount Emerald Wind Farm Substation.jpg, Mount Emerald Wind Farm Substation construction File:Mount Emerald Wind Farm entry.jpg, Mount Emerald Wind Farm entry File:Mount Emerald Wind Farm Opening Plaque.jpg, Mount Emerald Wind Farm Opening Plaque File:Mount Emerald wind farm turbine and moon.jpg, Mount Emerald wind farm turbine and moon

References

External links

Mount Emerald wind farm photographs

State Library of Queensland State Library of Queensland (State Library) is the state public reference and research library of Queensland, Australia, operated by the Government of Queensland, state government. The Library is governed by the Library Board of Queensland, whi ...