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One of New Zealand's biggest players in the windpower sector has proposed building desalination a plant to help solve South Australia's water shortage.
Trustpower is looking at using electricity from its 40MW windfarm at Myponga to produce fresh water from the sea.
Trustpower's business development manager, Rodney Ahern, told the Adelaide Advertiser that electricity generated from the wind could produce fresh water and pump it to fill the Myponga and Mt Bold reservoirs.
The proposal is similar to the 80 megawatt Emu Downs wind farm in Western Australia, which powers the Kwinana desalination plant.
Mr Ahern outlined the proposal in Adelaide following his company receiving the go-ahead for its A$200 million ($226.9 million), 42-turbine wind farm on the Hummocks and Barunga Ranges, west of Snowtown.
Work on the 88MW capacity wind farm, enough to power 60,000 average-sized houses, is due to start in April.
Further stages in the proposed 130-turbine site would rely on demand and federal or state renewable-energy schemes to allow it to compete, he said.
The Snowtown wind farm will take South Australia's wind farm capacity to 476MW of wind power.
Mr Ahern said South Australia should be aiming for a renewable energy target of a minimum of 10 per cent of total power sales within eight years.
Licences for at least nine windfarm projects have been sought by different applicants in South Australia, where wholesale electricity prices are a little higher than other states.
The higher prices, together with the renewable energy requirements have attracted wind power developers, because the Australian Government renewable energy certificates earn them between A3c to A4c a kilowatt hour, effectively doubling the income of a wind generator.
In New Zealand, carbon credits from the government are not worth as much as renewable energy certificates, but overall New Zealand wholesale electricity prices are higher.
Trustpower was taken over last December by Infratil when that company acquired the New Zealand assets of US-based Alliant Energy for $445 million.
- NZPA
