Badgingarra Emu Downs Wind Farm

On farming lands in Badgingarra, 200kms north of Perth is a huge Wind Farm called Emu Plains. There are more than 40 huge turbines which apparently cost around $180 million to build.  You can’t appreciate the size of these turbines without being there.  We watched a white service ute head down a dusty farm road towards the base of one of the turbines and by the time they parked the vehicle looked as small as a sheep in a far away paddock! This turbine farm alone makes enough electricity to power 80,000 homes and saves 455,000 tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions each year.

For a country like Australia, with its huge windy costal areas and sweeping farming lands, Wind Farms seem like an ideal way to generate electricity, with little impact and whilst still allowing the land amongst the turbines to be used as normal.

At Badgingarra where the turbines some of the paddocks had grazing cows and others had been cropped.  A second Wind Farm is also currently in progress that is due for completion in 2010.