Ballywater Wind Farm

The Ballywater Wind Farm is located between the villages of Kilmuckridge and Ballygarrett, and is located directly beside Ballinoulart in County Wexford, Ireland. It commenced operation in 2005 and has a capacity of 42 MW and consists of 21 gearless E-70 E4 2 MW Enercon wind turbines. It is clearly visible from the R742 regional road. Some of the wind turbines are within a couple of hundred metres of it.

View of Ballywater Wind Farm across their protected bird sanctuary adjacent to Ballinoulart Beach.

Energy and environment

The produced energy in one year is 110 GWh. This equals the yearly consumption of 125,000 people or 31,500 four person households. Within 3.7 months of operation the wind energy converters (WEC) at this site had produced an amount of energy equivalent to that used building and installing the WEC including production of the materials. For the next 20 years the wind farm will be producing electricity without using any resources and without pollution.

Technical specifications

The E-70 turbines have rotor diameters of 71 m, so the swept area is 3,959 m². The nacelle, in the hub height of 64 m, is assessable through a ladder within the tower, which is 4.2 m in diameter at the base and 2.9 m at top. The nacelle itself has a diameter of 5m the height of a two-storey building. The turbine rotor spins with a speed between 6 and 21.5 rpm and the rotor hub is directly coupled to the synchronous generator without a gear box for transmission. The turbine switches in at a wind speed of about 2.3 m/s. It reaches it nominal output at speed of 12.5 m/s where the pitch system of the rotor blades starts to limit the electrical power output automatically. Above wind speeds of 25 m/s the power output is gradually reduced again until the turbine switches off for protection at about 34 m/s.

The electricity is generated at voltages around 400 V and up to 2,300 As and at variable frequency proportional to the variable speed of the rotor. All produced energy is converted into direct current DC by a rectifier inside the nacelle and conducted to the inverters located in the bottom of the turbine tower. The inverters modulate the DC into alternating current (AC) with 50 Hz grid compliant frequency. Each turbine has a transformer inside the tower which transforms the voltage to the 20 kV internal grid voltage of the wind farm. At the tail station a wind farm transformer is increasing the voltage to 110,000 V and fed into the ESB network through 21 km underground cables.

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