From Nathan Steggel, Director, Windscape Institute
Windlab Limited is a Canberra headquartered company with strong links to both the ANU and Africa. Windlab was established from CSIRO wind prospecting technology in 2003 and since that time has identified and progressed wind energy projects from concept to construction ready across Australia, Canada, New Zealand, South Africa and United States. We established our South African business in 2007 and two projects are now up and running in South Africa. The 94MW West Coast One wind farm https://www.windlab.com/projects/westcoastone and the 134MW Amakhala Emoyeni wind farm https://www.windlab.com/projects/amakhala. West Coast One started commercial operations in June 2015 and Amakhala is under construction and nearly operational.
More recently Windab opened a small office in Dar-es Salaam and started development of projects across East
Africa. In addition to using our technology and expertise to identify exceptional wind energy sites, Windlab pride ourselves on our community engagement principles – the key principles are an open and transparent engagement process and outcomes that are fair and equitable for the local communities.
We’re currently waiting on the outcome of the expedited round of REIPPP 4.5 in South Africa https://www.ipprenewables.co.za/ – this is the Renewable Energy Independent Power Producer Procurement Programme. West Coast and Amakhala were successful in Round II of this program.
The ACT renewable auction process is similar to the process run in South Africa and requires that local economic commitments are made to research, education, export orientated and local initiatives in Canberra. Windlab was successful in round 1 of the ACT Wind Auction with Coonooer Bridge Wind Farm https://coonooerbridgewindfarm.com.au/ and Ararat Wind Farm and is undertaking the long-term asset management of both projects from its Canberra office on Marcus Clarke Street. One of the local commitments included developing and presenting a Masters level unit in Wind Energy for the ANU. The course runs annually over two intensive weeks with project work in between. The first week was delivered to 25 students in April 2016 and appeared to be highly successful – we gave examples of real projects throughout the course, including African project examples. Students attend the course from a broad range of science/engineering backgrounds – we are hopeful that in future years it may be possible to attract students from African countries to attend the course either in isolation or as part of a degree undertaken at ANU.
After all “Nishati safi ni muhimu kwa Africa ijayo” – Clean Energy is Africa’s Future!