| A windfarm is proposed on a hill on a private sheep farm 4 km north of Mt Barker on the western side of Albany Highway. The windfarm will consist of three wind turbines bigger than those in Esperance but smaller than those in Albany. As Mt Barker is inland, they will be on 73m high towers. The project will be about $8 million in total. |
NEWS: 5/8/2008 Mt Barker Windfarm gets certified capacity for 2010/2011 by the IMO. Some 2000MW of wind plant was submitted, but only Mt Barker gets certification! 4/8/2008 All three turbine locations are pegged by Denmark Surveying and Mapping. 11/07/2008 Huge winds reset records at the top of Mt Barker Hill for monitoring sensors. On Friday morning at 7:30am, the top anememeter, 46m above the ground, recorded a 10 minute average windspeed of 30.8 m/s compared the previous maximum two years ago of 25.8 m/s. At the same time, the highest 2 second gust was also recorded and at 41.3m/s (149km/hr) is much higher compared to the previous record of 35.7 m/s. While the wind turbines would have shut down at these windspeeds, they are still well below survival speed. |