Ten Mile Lagoon and Nine Mile Beach Electrical Wind Farms, Esperance Western Australia - Windmills on Waymarking.com

Esperance had the first electrical wind farm in Australia, built at Salmon Beach as a research facility in 1987. It was decommissioned in 2002 although one of those machines still stands as a monument at the Salmon Beach site, and another has been relocated into the town of Esperance near the museum.

The Ten Mile Lagoon wind farm was the first commercial wind farm in Australia. The Nine Mile Beach Wind Farm, built with the financial assistance of the Australian Greenhouse Office through the Western Australian Sustainable Energy Development Office, adds more wind energy to the local electrical system.

Together the Ten Mile Lagoon and Nine Mile Beach Electrical Wind Farms have a capacity of 5.6 Megawatts and save about 10,000 tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions each year. They operate in parallel with the 30 Megawatt Esperance gas turbine power station.

So Why Esperance and Wind Farms?

Esperance is remote and windy. This remoteness means that Esperance is not connected to the Western Australian main electricity grid and so it has its own power station. As the wind resource is so good here, the wind farms generate electricity more cost effectively than at other locations.

In an average year these two wind farms will generate 23% of Esperance's electricity and up to 60% instantaneously. Because of wind gusts, wind farm output can vary and if not controlled correctly this can cause the local electricity supply to fluctuate. To prevent this, computer control equipment has been installed at both the power station and the individual wind turbines. These communicate through radio communications equipment between each wind farm and the power station.

I first visited this wind farm on February 23rd 2009, when I hunted down and found the geocache GCKZ9K Farming the Wind By Westy Clan. At the same time I had hoped to claim a find of the Geocaching Australia Locationless Cache GA1278 Wind Power by Gwennie1984, but I was beaten to it by richlink who logged it on December 5th 2008. I returned on January 6th 2012, to drop a couple of trackables into GCKZ9K Farming the Wind, and took a fresh batch of photos for this Waymark.

There are no charges for visiting the wind farm. Parking has been provided in the Public Access Area at the Ten Mile Lagoon Wind Farm, with two bus/coach parking bays as well as bays for 15 cars. Information provided in this listing was kindly provided by the manager of the Wind Farms, Verve Energy, in the Information Shelter and on the base section of Turbine No. 3.

No public access is allowed to the Nine Mile Beach Wind Farm.

Purpose: Electricity Open to the public: yes Is This Windmill Functional?: Yes! Windmill Farm: yes Cost: 0.00 (listed in local currency) Museum on Site: no Date of Manufacture: Not listed

Visit Instructions:
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Recent Visits/Logs:

Date Logged Log User Rating   01/04/2018 blingg visited it 03/30/2013 R0gue visited it

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