Europe
I began the year in Austria, having flown into Vienna in time for the New Year’s celebration, Silvester. Oh my, but these staid conservative Viennese know how to party, they do crowds really well, classical violins over there, Russian heavy metal folk bands over here, . . . . it is the middle of winter and the city centre is packed.
Viennese town hill on New Year’s Eve.
Susanna had been there since the 1st of November as her mother had a terminal form of cancer and only had months to live. It was to be an extraordinarily tough year for Susanna as she had spent over half of it in Vienna helping her father out and sorting out her mother’s affairs.
I left for the UK a week later to spend some time with my sister, Rebecca and her family and also to stay with Paul in London. I saw his new place, lots of elbow grease but the location and views are awesome.
I finally discover where the drinkable coffee in the UK is.
One day, I caught up with Beck in London and we climbed the 61m high Monument to the Great Fire of London (1666) which destroyed 13,200 houses, 87 parish churches and the previous St Pauls Cathedral. We then met up with Andie (Bec’s husband) and Paul for a nice pub lunch at the olde style Counting House.
Tourists in London . . .
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I returned to Vienna to spend another week with Suz and her parents, her mother now permanently in hospital. She died four days after I left.
Suzanna remained in Vienna until the middle of March, having to spend a lot of time sorting out things and taking care of her father. We also saw the George Clooney movie “The Ides of March” with friends of Susanna’s.
Susanna took me to the local showgrounds and we went up the Ferris Wheel. A wonderful piece of Victorian era engineering, built in 1805 and still going strong. |
Susanna in one of the gondolas, the view of Vienna has changed somewhat since the wheel was built.
SkyFarming
After some ten years, we are at last getting the Denmark windfarm into the ground. Two brand new 800kW E48 Enercon wind turbines are now on Wilson Head, 10km south of the town of Denmark. One is up and one is ready to go up. Denmark Community Windfarm Ltd will own and operate the windfarm and are, in fact, our client. We project manage the construction of the roads and foundations on the civil side and cabling, the switchroom and the communication link on the electrical side. We also deal with Western Power, the Independent Market Operator, Synergy and the electrical and telecommunications consultants.
Peter and Susanna watch the blinding for T1 being poured.
DCW Ltd deal with the finances, investors and the public relations.
Construction in Denmark began in earnest at the end of June when Peter and I took a trailer full of office furniture down to Denmark. We hired a 4WD ute for 6 weeks until the road had been sufficiently built for a 2WD. Once again, the old red Toyota (dad's old car, 22 years old and over 320,000km) was to be the site vehicle - on the grounds that meeting an timely end from a backing front end loader or bulldozer was not going to be a major heartache and it was still very reliable. And given we were working on our second windfarm and there were plenty of potential projects out there, we bought a Bluemotion diesel Golf. It has Prius beating fuel consumption on the highway, and plenty of torque for towing trailers full of kit. It was a wise decision given the kilometres it has been driven as a shuttle service to Denmark over the past 6 months. We even bought a new trailer, the old one had been stolen from site, along with a few drums of diesel.
It has been a much harder project than Mt Barker; the Shire was hands off there, not so much in Denmark. Being on uncleared coastal scrub on rolling sand dunes, the road was always going to be difficult. At Mt Barker, the land was mostly cleared and it was a simple matter of connecting the turbine locations with some existing track, and ensuring the corners were not too sharp, the inclinations not too steep and the road not too soft. In Denmark, it is very hard to simply walk across the site. In the valleys, it is Quokka country. Electrically, the project is also very difficult as the nearest substation is Albany some 70km away. This has meant a restriction on the maximum output of the windfarm to 1.44MW, we had originally intended 2.4MW. Even as the crow flies, at 47km even the com link in Denmark was difficult – Mt Barker is just 3.5km away from the substation. However, this distance also means that the value of the electricity is higher. The windfarm is 10km from Denmark which is 60km from Albany. Denmark will be Australia’s smallest grid connected windfarm (excluded turbines on the load side of the meter). Nevertheless, with the winds expected and the higher per unit prices, the economics should be roughly the same as Mt Barker.
Mt Barker continues along, and the production after four full seasons confirms our expectations were too much. Nevertheless, having installed the project under budget, we are still hitting financial targets and will be refinancing early next year. With interest rates continuing to fall, the project is proving a very worthwhile investment.
Bouverie; on a less positive note, the manufacturer of the wind turbine, ReDriven, went bust earlier this year. Whilst inevitable given the problems we have always had with them, it is still disappointing. Their engineering and managerial capability was simply inadequate. To be fair, even Proven, a well established Scottish company which builds a very tough machine went bust last year. Given the current drop in the global price of Photovoltaics (solar panels) from a world wide glut in production and the high Aussie dollar, we are looking at replacing the output of the turbine with solar panels.
Social
Susanna and I continue to head out to Henderson now and then, and also to Subiaco for coffee beans but we have given up the badminton at Murdoch Uni, it was just too hard with Denmark. I also gave up German at the Goethe Institute. I would like to continue but few things make me feel so . . . thick. Besides, being able to read and write German is much less of a priority than hearing and understanding it and speaking it.
We continue the Freeway ride tradition, though we rode the short leg from Kwinana to Perth this year. Then a slow crawl back home via the Brew Ha for coffee and muffin, and an ice cream at Cottesloe with a quick look at the Sculptures by the Sea before really crawling home.
In March, my sister, Rebecca, from England came out here with her entire family. Both my sisters rented houses on Rottnest for the week and we went over on the Saturday. Both my parents came over and it was a huge family thing. The last time Bec & Co were over, was Busselton, about 6 years ago.
Andrew, Andie, Dad and Suz roughing it in Rottnest.
Paul had come out to WA two weeks earlier. Living in London, he appreciated how good it is to be able to casually ride to the beach in a T shirt and swimmers for a quick dip. Right now, it is so hot, we went twice yesterday
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Over winter, I started going to Kalamunda on Wednesday nights for ride with the lads. In May, I discovered a crack in the mountain bike frame. I had had it nearly four years. However, it was a common problem for that frame and Giant replaced it with a 2012 frame under warranty and this included the rear triangle and rear shock. The bike now handles better than ever and I am getting much quicker down the hills. I have also been suffering a frustrating number of injuries, are the two related?
In August, I participated in a very wet and extremely muddy 2hr race in Dunsborough, it had rained 14mm overnight. Despite being flatter than last year, the Dwellingup 100 was once again, a very hard slog.
D100 - after giving blood on Turner Hill, jumps still make me nervous. |
This year I went down to Northcliffe with Graham, my brother in law and Louis, my nephew for the 6hr Avanti and we entered as team SkyFarming. I had taken them to the Goat Farm a fortnight before and gave a most painful demonstration of how not to ride rock gardens. A week later, I took them out to the Camel Farm and we rode most of the Kalamunda Circuit during the thunderstorm that had been threatening all day. And there was hail. The race, by comparison, had exquisite riding conditions, cool with light rain. Despite having the oldest bike ever to have entered the race (pre even V brakes!, cro mo steel throughout, no suspension), and being shared between Louis and Graham, the bike, unlike a quarter of the field, suffered no mechanicals. The pitiful attendance, about a dozen riders, did not reflect the quality of the track - and being two weeks ahead of the premier mountain bike race (festival) Dawn to Dusk, excellent training. Caught up with other things and yet another injury, I failed to enter and ended up a street party at the cul de sac around the corner with Rob and Catherine.
A couple of weeks earlier, we had been invited by Rob and Catherine, she used to live there, to the Lilly St Lasagne Bakeoff, it's 15th year running.
The car swop with Phil has morphed into a car swop with Martina where she takes the Golf when she goes country and leaves us her 10 yr bomb.
House
We finally got round to replacing the barely working greywater system with a much better system made by people who are at least, still around. It is ever more money and effort but it has been working perfectly so far.
Susanna had been wanting bees for sometime so when Martina found a swarm in her worm garden (again), Phil helped us put a hive together and get them. She had also just seen a movie about bees in Vienna and read a book by a well known American bee keeper. We expect to have plenty of honey by Easter.
Phil and Susanna inspecting progress on our brand new bee hive.
More photos of the Denmark Community Windfarm here, http://www.skyfarming.com.au/normal/dcw.htm.
All the best for 2013.
Andrew Woodroffe
30/12/2012
