Trustpower’s Australian wind farm producing 9.4% below expectations

New Zealand’s Trustpower has estimated that its Snowtown 2 wind farm, located in South Australia is producing 9.4% less power than expectations.

Total capacity of the wind farm is 270MW. Because of the reduced production, the capacity of the farm comes down to down to 892GWh from 985GWh per year.

The company has conducted an operational review of the farm, after completing its commissioning 12 months back.

Trustpower said that the decreasing trend occurred because of limitations associated with the complex applications used in the site.

The low rate of production is said to have forced the company to cut the valuation of Snowtown 2 by $70m.

The reduced production at the site further lowers the company’s earnings by about $8.5m.

Trustpower carried out the review six months after it raised the book value of Snowtown 2 by $310m above its $A450m cost. Independent auditor Deloitte suggested the company to conduct the review.

The whole Snowtown project is known to be Australia’s second largest wind generation complex, which has a total capacity to produce 370MW power.

The project was completed in two phases – South and North, with a total investment of around $660m.

Trustpower boss Vince Hawksworth was quoted by RenewEconomy as saying: "Energy yield modelling techniques are continuing to evolve to improve the accuracy of prediction, informed by research and analysis by wind industry participants and experts."

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Image: Hallett wind farms, South Australia. Photo courtsey of SeeNews.

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