Preloved wind turbines from Netherlands help power remote outback microgrid

UPDATED: A 2.5MW wind farm using five refurbished Enercon wind turbines will form part of a hybrid renewables and battery storage microgrid being developed in Western Australia.*

In a video posted on LinkedIn on Friday, Advanced Energy Resources documented the roadtrip that the preloved wind turbine parts took to the Moora microgrid following a sea voyage from their previous home in the Netherlands.

“Following a successful wind farm delivery of five refurbished 0.5MW Enercon E40 wind turbines at Port Gregory (near Kalbarri, WA) AER has managed all aspects of the dismantling and recommissioning of [the] turbines,” the accompanying LinkedIn post says.

“Moora microgrid will soon commence supplying renewable energy to local energy users in the Dandaragan/Moora area as a 7+MW microgrid incorporating wind, PV, biogas, battery storage and almost 50km of private HV network.”

In comments under the LinkedIn post, AER’s Lucas Castelli says the company has put the Moora project together after starting work on the concept about six years ago.

“It is privately owned and operates as a build/own/operate model – well received on several fronts by local land owners/energy offtakers,” Castelli says.

AER has built a similar microgrid in Power Gregory in WA, also using refurbished wind turbines, to help power GMA Garnet’s operations in Port Gregory – which GMA describes as the highest producing garnet mine in the world.

That microgrid, located around 50km south of Kalbarri, features a 1MW solar farm and a 2MW/0.5MWh battery energy storage system (BESS) using “an innovative, Australian first connection topology.”

According to the website, the Port Gregory microgrid’s battery is manufactured by Kokam and the battery inverters by Siemens.

“The design can provide backup power during grid outages, and facilitates a very high penetration of customer-side renewable generation (up to 90%),” AER says.

“The BESS has been designed to offer on-demand support to the local electricity network in future should this be required by the network operator.”

The Port Gregory microgrid received federal funding from ARENA, as well as $1.8 million from the second round of the WA government’s Clean Energy Future Fund, which Castelli says was “critical” to the project’s success.

The problem of what to do with used wind turbine parts – and particularly the hard-to-recycle blades – is something the wind industry is currently trying to grapple with as some of the earliest wind farms installed around the globe come to the end of their lives.

Refurbishing used turbines for applications like the Moora Microgrid presents a good option, particularly considering some microgrid applications might require smaller turbines and for shorter timeframes than expected of large-scale wind farms.

*This article has been corrected. The original article confused the Moora microgrid and the Port Gregory micgrogrid as the same project. They are two separate projects.