Last Week, three of the EmpowerWA team took a road trip to the Collgar Wind Farm.
After an hour of following mining villages up Greenmount Hill, we finally made it to Merredin.
After a quick bite to eat, we headed out to the Wind Farm.
The Wind Farm is an impressive sight. Not only are the turbines seemingly graceful because of their curved blades, it is apparent that the farm fits neatly into the pastoral environment around it. It seems almost as if the farm operates 80 metres above what we traditionally know as farms, while the farms below operate seamlessly in the same environment.
Each turbine at Collgar is 80 metres high and operates at 1.86 megawatts. The turbines are placed to make the most of the wind profile in that area.
To get an idea of the scale of the turbines, this is a turbine blade, laid down behind the EmpowerWA hybrid. The blade is twice as long as this photo shows.
"Wind, it means the world to us"
Bryan works on the maintenance of the wind farm. Bryan is a great example of how renewable energy is generating jobs in Western Australia. Post construction, there are jobs at the farm maintaining the turbines with Vestas, jobs mantaining the power station and grid connection with Horizon Energy and jobs overseeing the project with the Collgar Wind Farm group.
The most remarkable thing about the whole day? The way each worker we interviewed identified the two reasons they like their job. They are all boys so the biggest reason they liked their jobs was the cutting edge technology, but the second reason was always that they were helping to make the world a better place.
The Collgar Wind Farm is Western Australian renewable energy in action. The farm almost doubled Western Australia's renewable energy output from 5 to 9 per cent when it came online last year. The Farm generates so much more than clean secure energy, it generates jobs and supports the local community and economy.
