The Western Australian shire of Esperance – home to Australia’s first commercial and experimental wind farm – is investigating renewable energy options to address what it has described as the prohibitively high cost of electricity supply in the region.
Esperance council said on the weekend it was planning to trial of a variety of renewable energy sources, including wind and big solar as part of plans to address the shire’s long-term sustainability and growth.
The council said that fossil fuel power costs in the region had become high enough to hinder efforts to expand the town’s economy and population in years to come, ABC Online reports.
Shire president Malcolm Heasman said the idea of attracting trials of renewable energy was floated by the shire as part of its future planning strategy.
“I think there’s a lot of energy that can be harnessed that we’re not even remotely touching at the moment,” Heasman told the ABC.
“The obvious one is solar power, and we would need to look at the feasibility of trying to establish a reasonable solar-powered system in Esperance.
“The big issue will be the storage of that power and how we feed it into our network that we have and whether or not it’s an economic source of power as well,” he said.
“I suspect that we would have to run a pretty comprehensive feasibility study because it’s going to require the attraction of a fair bit of capital investment and you’re not going to attract that capital without having some runs on the board.”
Esperance’s push to develop renewables comes as its nation-leading wind farms – Ten Mile Lagoon and Nine Mile Beach, built in 1987 – near closure, after the former of the two reached the end of its design life last year.
Government-owned utility Synergy, which operates the two winds farms, says the turbines at Ten Mile could safely keep operating for another five to seven years, but that it would not replace them when the facility finally closed.
Currently, the two wind farms can supply up to 20 per cent of the town’s electricity.
Emeritus Professor of physics and energy studies at Murdoch University, Philip Jennings, said Esperance was a pioneer site for wind because of its excellent and reliable resource.
“Wind power in the right locations, and Esperance would be one of them, is probably the most cost-effective option of all and is probably a lot cheaper than diesel generation which they’re using there for their main power supply at the present time,” Jennings said.
“It’ll all depend what the buy-back arrangements are with the utilities, I mean that’s what the key question is for the authorities in the Esperance Shire is what sort of deal they can cut with Horizon Power.”
Just over a year ago, Horizon Power midwest supply program director, Scott Davis, told the ABC a shift to 100 per cent renewables for Esperance – while technically possible – was a couple of decades away.
“I couldn’t say what the cost would be now, but there’s quite a big gap between the current cost of operating the power system and moving to 100 per cent renewable energy and I think we’re probably a couple of decades away from when that crossover point would happen.”
But the cost of renewable energy alternatives is decreasing all the time – so much so that increasing numbers of local government groups (most recently, NSW’s Coffs Harbour) are committing to a shift to 100 per cent renewables as the most economically sensible option.
In NSW alone, Lismore has committed to a 100 per cent by 2023 renewable energy target, and Uralla has been revealed as a candidate for Australia’s first zero net energy town.
And the Byron Shire – part of the northern rivers region of NSW – revealed plans to become Australia’s first “net zero emissions” region, with a goal to reduce emissions from energy, transport, buildings, waste and land use to zero within 10 years.
In Victoria, the towns of Newstead and Yackandandah are in an unofficial race to be the first 100 per cent renewable energy towns in that state, while towns like Ravensthorpe in WA are looking likely to leave the grid because the grid operator thinks it’s the cheapest and safest thing to do.
In WA, the Fremantle council is planning its own large-scale solar array, of between 10MW and 15MW.
According to Jennings, Esperance’s solar resources are also “very good”.
And he has recommended the council keep an eye on the emerging wave power work going on in the state – with Carnegie Wave Energy’s CETO-5 array recently connected to the local grid in Perth, achieving a world first.
“All along the south coast there’s enormous potential for both wave and wind power and that’s the sort of technology that might want to be looking at.”
