Esperance Wind-Gas System

Esperance, on the south coast of Western Australia, has two wind farms. The newest, built by Verve Energy in 2004 at Nine Mile Beach, has six 600kW turbines and powers the equivalent of 2500 homes.

This wind farm operates with the Ten Mile Lagoon wind farm which was commissioned in 1993 and has nine 225kW wind turbines.

These wind farms supply 20% of Esperance’s power needs and work in parallel with a gas turbine power station which is privately-owned and operated. The power station has high-efficiency, low-emission gas turbine generators. Natural gas for the power station is supplied via a gas pipeline from Kambalda.

The Nine Mile Beach wind farm offsets greenhouse gas emissions by an estimated 9,500 tonnes per annum based on diesel generation and 6,500 tonnes based on gas generation plant.