You will hear a talk about wind power. Now listen carefully and answer the questions. Good morning. Thank you for giving me the opportunity to speak at this year's alternative energy seminar. Right. Well, I know that the next speaker, John Duncart, is going to talk about the mechanics of generating power using wind as an alternative source of energy, so I won't be using any technical terms, and I won't be going into the technology of how wind generators actually work. I'll be concentrating on sharing my own experiences with you. For those of you who don't know, I live on a very windy farm some 3,000 kilometres from the nearest city. That means we're not connected to the State Electricity Commission's grid, and we have to produce our own electricity. When I first bought the farm in 1975, we got our electricity supply exclusively from diesel and petrol generators. The problems with this were twofold. A lot of fuel was wasted because the generators usually didn't run to their full capacity. And more importantly to my wife, the generators were extremely noisy, especially at night. After we'd been on the farm for about six months, I heard about what they called a hybrid system. This meant that we could keep the diesel generator, but we also got a generator that was powered by wind. Because our place is so consistently windy, especially in summer, our hybrid system worked very well. In fact, we couldn't believe how well it worked. We also had friends closer to the city who bought this hybrid system at the same time. And they were very pleased with the efficiency of it as well. Their farm is considerably less windy than ours, so even in moderately windy sites, the hybrid system appeared to work well. Both of us agreed that we made substantial savings in fuel at the end of the first year, and of course, our wives were happier, because it wasn't as noisy as often. In 1984, we found that we were rarely using our diesel generator and decided to try our hand at becoming self-sufficient in wind-generated power. We were sure that we'd survive without the backup of the diesel generator, so we imported four wind generators from Denmark. America and Australia were dabbling in the technology, but we were too far behind the Europeans. The benefits of wind generators were much more obvious to the Danes, and now, as a result, they supply about 50% of wind turbines around the world. Anyway, the Danish wind generators had a rated power output of 55 kilowatts per generator. They made quite an impact on our landscape, and even though we could sometimes hear the mechanical noise from the generator itself, they were very quiet. The rotor diameters were about 20 metres. We felt proud that we were only using energy from clear, moving air to generate our electricity, no diesel or petrol or fuel smells either. We knew that our resource was renewable. We are, after all, not going to run out of wind, especially at our place. The wind turbine is used to charge up batteries which store the energy. Last year, we bought a 600-kilowatt machine. It is about 46 meters high, with a rotor diameter of 43.5 meters. We found that the cost of the turbine was recovered within about 8 months. It should produce over 1 million kilowatt hours per year for us. It does look a bit strange against our flat terrain, but we love it. Best of all, my wife says she can't even hear the 'windmill', as she calls it, from our house at night. Frankly, I think her hearing just isn't what it used to be, but I must agree that it is very quiet. Additionally, we expect it to last for about 20 years with regular six-monthly maintenance. Our farm is isolated, and yet you'd be amazed by the number of visitors we have each year to inspect our wind turbines and the effectiveness of the wind generators. Actually, we often joke that when we stop making money from the farm, we'll charge tourists to come and visit our very own wind farm. There is also the possibility of selling the electricity that we generate back to the Electricity Commission, but I think that is all in the future. We've had a lot of people ask us why we chose wind-power generated energy rather than solar energy, but as soon as they visit our windy farm, they know why. Even if our farm were not as windy as it is, we'd make that choice again. From all accounts, it is the least expensive form of renewable energy technology that we have. it can be used in a variety of applications, from isolated farms such as ours to supplying small sailboats without power. Now, I'll hand you over to John Duncart from the Danish company that sold us our original four wind turbines, and he'll explain how this remarkable technology has developed over the last 20 or 30 years.