Getting the Mt Barker windfarm in the ground and spinning and catching up with old friends and relatives, here and in Europe .
SkyFarming
At last, and after 7 years, we finally get Mt Barker in the ground and spinning. In less than a year, we also paid out modest dividends to our investors.
I spent just over a month down to our site office in Mt Barker to support Peter and was putting photos up on the website daily during the actual erection of the turbines.
SkyFarmers watch number 2 go up.
Testing safety gear!
We held an Open/Launch day on the 9th of April. I am unsure of numbers but Rotary said they sold 600 sausages. As the site is a private sheep farm, it was the only opportunity for allow locals to see the turbines up close and to see that very little clearing was required. The night before, we had our major investor (AER – Sam, John and Luca) turn up at the project office/SF accommodation for dinner. They brought pasta and I ordered pizza. I had come down with Charlie (global cyclist), mum had come down with Alice, my niece. After AER had left, the dinner continued as Bridget and the rest of the family then turned up. It was a huge Friday night. More details and photos at the link below.
The night before the launch, big celebratory dinner at the site office.
The Bouverie project is now 2 years old and the replacement nacelle with yet another set of blades is due February, 2012. In marked contrast, the solar panels we installed on the site are performing 25% better than expected.
Mt Barker in operation has taken up more time than expected with a number of outstanding issues taking the next 6 months or so to finalise. The wind has been down on expectations but the real worry has been the outages from the network. It is not a manned power station and while the turbines have performed impeccably, the switchroom switchgear has not. Denmark is still happening and Peter has done a lot of work with the civil works as the site, unlike the smooth cleared hill of Mt Barker, is has dense low lying vegetation in the valleys and is quite hilly. Recent meetings with Enercon people have settled the electrical studies and we are just about there with network connection. The Power Purchase Agreement with a major retailer has just about been settled, too.
The car sharing deal with Phil's i30 continues, and we have clocked up 90,000km in 3 years (I have done about half the kilometres but only 10% of the time). The red car will become the site car for Denmark.
Cycling
Also in March, as usual, team SkyFarming participated in the freeway ride in from Kwinana to Joondalup, returning via Cottesloe to check out Sculptures by the Sea (now also showing in Manly, Sydney and Arhaus in Denmark).
I was still living in Mt Barker as the commissioning was yet to be finished, when the Karri Cup was on. I got the kilometres in going for rides around and up Mt Barker Hill, and also out to the Porongorups (11km east of Mt Barker, it has the big Karri tree, gorgeous). That place gets very dark and lonely at night. I was able to convince Peter to take me to Northcliffe while he visited his daughter in Pemberton. I had forgotten how hard it is! Still, I was able to catch up with a number of old friends.
During the five weeks I spent in Europe, I managed ride around 300km on five different bikes in four different countries.
In celebration in getting the windfarm in the ground, I bought a new set of wheels (Sun Ringles) including tubeless types, and Candy pedals. In July, a new 50km mountain bike race was organised in Kalamunda, local hills. Despite the new wheels, it was a very tough ride with a particularly nasty steep hill in the last kilometre with some guy in a tux sitting on a rock playing the funeral march on his violin as we crawled up.
I managed the Dwellingup 100, again, it has not gotten any easier.
In early November, I drove down to Margaret River to look at some dairy farms which had pivot irrigators (800m long!) and consequently, huge electricity bills. Some potential for small, single, embedded wind turbines but still a lot of connection risk and issues with determining when electricity is retail or wholesale – no Feed in Tariffs like Europe. On the way back, I detoured to Northcliffe and participated in the Avanti 6hr, pulling out after 3 1/2hrs – as if I had a team mate.
A fortnight later, I rode with a team of two guys in the Jarradale 12hr, riding 4 laps to last year's 3 1/3, I was really shattered this time and slept most of the rest of the day.
The trip to Europe
In May, Suz and I finally had the opportunity to go to Europe to catch up with people. It had been 4 and a half years since I had seen Suz's folks and Andy. I ended up spending just under a week with my sister Rebecca and her family in Market Harborough, 6 days with Paul in London and 6 days with Maritza in Mandel in Norway before meeting with Suz in Vienna . We also caught up Willie and Roswita, and Alex (Willie's brother) in Salzburg . Alex has a girlfriend who is into road riding and they have a couple of very nice Canyon bikes (the ones Cadel Evan used to ride before BMC). I was suitably jealous – the surrounding hills are offer serious hill time.
Of course, when we get to Gastein, the hills have become Alpine Mountains, and the riding is either up on the granny gear or down on the brakes. Back in Vienna , Volker and Enke flew down from Berlin to spend the weekend with us. I have never eaten so much kuchen!
All my life, as a Perth boy, I had been brought to believe in the weather is foul and wet and miserable in Europe . Not during the 5 weeks I was there, just a little rain and mostly at night. It was great trip but next time, I bring my own toys, see link below for more photos and details.
Socially
We started going to Badminton, again. Dad finally moved into his place in Fremantle, just about 800m away. Both the builders of the new place and the sale of St Ives took much, much longer than expected.
In March, Susanna and I celebrated our now 7th wedding anniversary watching the sunset at the Indianna Tea Rooms at Cottesloe Beach .
Suz continues her efforts to grow things in the garden, ‘average' winter rain at last. Suz has been successful with the lettuce and the plum tree has again provided over a dozen plums, but the stand out success is the blue berrie tree, kilos of berries! The lettuce worked ok, chilli as good as ever, the herbs remain in fine form but like last year, the pumpkins and tomatoes and capsicum remain small and discouraging. And I still dutifully go to German lessons with the Goethe Institute at UWA.
30mm of rain on the 6th December filled the tank from empty, and a week later another huge fall, 44mm at Perth airport, now ensures the rainfall for 2011 is above average for the first time in at least 4 years. We have had a spectacular wildflower season and hope it does not turn into a spectacular wild fire season - WA has already lost 39 homes in the Margaret River area this year.
Stays
Years ago, Hubert had come over from France to gain some work experience with SkyFarming. The year before last, he and a friend Karim rode from Beijing to Paris via Indian and Thailand . They spent a few months on the road with another global cyclist, a young Korean IT worker called Charlie.
Charlie arrived on the 1 st of April and spent a few weeks in our visitor's room getting a job, banking, licensing and accommodation sorted. And while Suz and I were in Europe , he remained at Samson St along with Peter's daughter, Isabel.
Dad, Charlie, Phil, Suz and myself, farewell BBQ for Charlie.
Hubert also turn up for just over for a week in August, it had been 7 years since he had gone down to Mt Barker with me to install the wind monitoring equipment on Mt Barker Hill. An old colleague of Susanna's, Luk Steen and his wife, Hanna also came over for a week in October. He had accompanied Suz to the wind conference where Suz and I met. But for local public holiday, I was going to meet Steen when I was travelling around Denmark (the country) just after Bec and Andy's wedding. We had stayed at their place in Arhaus one European winter.The discussions' were more wine than wind turbines, with an expensive visit to the Swan Valley . Penguin Island and Whiteman Park provided the Danes with the required wildlife viewing.
Luk, Hanna and Suz on Penguin Island .
In November, the first ever National Greens Conference was in Fremantle and I was able to billet a couple of people including a SA Green, Matt Fischer who had been one of the main players behind the eco village, Hallifax – the reason why I went to Adelaide 3 times some 15 years ago. And in the last week of November, we had Alexander stay over Monday night. One of our major investors in Mt Barker will also stay a night mid December before we go down to Mt Barker for Bouverie maintenance.
Links:
• More photos of the windfarm are at links at the bottom of the homepage, http://www.mtbarkerpower.com.au
• ../Europe2011/ for more photos and details of the Europe trip
Andrew Woodroffe, 10 December, 2011
Mt Barker Community Windfarm from the top of the Porongurups at Sunset, Open Day.
