BACKGROUND

A team of experienced planning professionals, developers and engineers have been investigating the Penshurst site since 2006. Our sophisticated mapping software has allowed us to identify Penshurst as a suitable location and will allow us to plan turbine locations according to a number of environmental, cultural heritage, visual and acoustic constraints.

In late 2006 RES erected a meteorological mast to perform wind monitoring approximately 7km to the south of Penshurst. More recently another wind monitoring mast has been erected approximately 11km south-west of Penshurst.

Over the past 12 months RES has also been undertaking numerous environmental, archaeological, engineering and technical onsite investigations to determine the size, location and number of wind turbines to be involved in the project. These investigations have indicated that the wind farm site may have the potential to house up to 223 wind turbine generators in the area.

The final number, height and capacity of the wind turbines to be utilised on the site are yet to be determined, but the maximum height  each turbine could potentially be is 175 metres from the ground to the blade tip. The capacity of each turbine will be in the region of 3.4MW, which would result in a maximum installed capacity  for the Penshurst Wind Farm of around 758MW, depending on the precise wind turbine model selected.

Why Penshurst?

The proposed Penshurst site is an ideal location for a wind farm project. RES' investigations have demonstrated that the area experiences a good wind resource, and is within a feasible distance to a suitable grid connection point. The wind farm region is also appropriately zoned in the local planning schemes, and has a low population density. The project site is also sufficiently large to provide the flexibility to design a wind farm layout to avoid any major ecological, engineering or technical constraints.