Australia Wind Prospecting

Wind farm development in Australia is constantly increasing and today there are more than 150 wind farms operating or proposed in the country. Nevertheless there is still significant potential for further investments. Due to the nature of the industry it is important for the best sites to be identified and given priority for development in order to get the best return for investment and the most energy out of this renewable resource. As a first step to finding ideal wind farm sites in Australia, Kenex has developed a preliminary wind prospecting model for Queensland.

This model uses the Fuzzy Logic modelling technique successfully used for wind prospecting in New Zealand.  It differs from the New Zealand model in scale, the spatial variables chosen, and the weighting of each variable, due to the considerably different terrain and cultural considerations in Australia. While still using the principal spatial variables that influence wind farm siting (e.g. wind speed, slope, and land use), particular importance has been given to distance from roads, transmission lines and built up areas, in order to eliminate areas that are suitable based on wind speed and terrain, but are too isolated to be of economical interest.

All spatial data used in this model is held by Kenex and came from a number of different organisations including NASA (for the SRTM DEM files), the Queensland Government and Geoscience Australia. The data were analysed and reclassified to create predictive maps that were then weighted and combined using fuzzy operators (AND, OR, SUM, product and gamma). A final map was produced that ranks suitability for wind farm development, taking into account all of the input variables.

This preliminary model has successfully identified the location of the planned Coopers Gap wind farm and has located several potential regions for follow-up investigation. The next step is to develop detailed models, using higher quality data and more advanced terrain modelling techniques, over areas of interest identified by the Queensland wind prospecting model. These detailed models can then be used to define the extent of possible wind farms and help with designing the turbine layout.

As an example of the effectiveness of this stepwise prospecting approach in narrowing down and highlighting targets in a specific region, Kenex has undertaken a more detailed model over the Coopers Gap wind farm, using 1 km resolution mesoscale wind speed data from Aurecon and higher quality spatial data. The results of this detailed model show a significant reduction in the target area, and highlight only the most suitable sites for wind turbines.

Target area from Queensland prospecting model over Coopers Gap	Detailed wind prospecting model over Coopers Gap

This prospecting technique would be highly effective in any Australian state and we are currently working on developing a set of predictive parameters that are specific to the requirements of wind farm development in Australia.