Australia - Wind farm to power Sydney desalination plant

The New South Wales Government will use energy from a wind farm at Bungendore, near Queenbeyan, as the renewable energy source for the Kurnell desalination plant.

The government has spent several weeks studying competing bids to supply renewable energy to the project, before opting to source the power from Babcock & Brown Wind Partners and Babcock & Brown Power.

The Bungendore project won against a competing bid to supply power from Epuron, which is pushing for a $2 billion wind power project at Silverton, near Broken Hill. This project has been delayed seeking regulatory approvals, in particular changes to property leasing conditions.

The Bungendore project will have capacity of about 132 MWs NSW Premier Mr Morris Iemma said.

It is anticipated that output from the wind farm will total 400,000 MW hours a year, with the desalination plant using 330,000 MW hours a year, when operating at maximum capacity.

Sydney Water has agreed to buy the output from the project, along with the renewable energy certificates the project will generated under a 20-year contract.