MEASURED, NOT ASSUMED
TOP-DECILE WIND, STRONG SOLAR, OPPOSED OVER 24HR
Among the Best Anywhere
GGE regards Boolathana as one of the strongest green-ammonia sites anywhere in the world. The independent resource assessment describes a combination that is globally rare: top-decile wind and elite solar, opposed across the day, on a single contiguous site at a scale the assessment considers unique.
The site is a single 148,000-hectare title, not a resource assembled parcel by parcel across many owners. GGE holds a Section 91 licence under the Land Administration Act for the investigations the project requires, and exclusive access to the landholding under a separate deed with the pastoral lessee running to December 2030 – one counterparty, and no competing party able to develop the same ground. It carries 23 kilometres of direct Indian Ocean coastline, giving both a frontage for export and, as the project scales, seawater desalinated on site. The terrain is flat, which the wind assessment notes as an aid to buildability, supporting a broad, consistent turbine layout. Scale, single control, coastal access and a buildable site rarely occur together, and here they do.
The region’s standing is recognised beyond the project. In December 2021 the Gascoyne was named a regional hydrogen technology cluster under National Energy Resources Australia’s Hydrogen Technology Cluster Australia program, an Australian-Government-funded initiative led locally by the Carnarvon Chamber of Commerce, and the project is listed on CSIRO’s national HyResource map of Australian hydrogen projects. These mark the Gascoyne as a hydrogen region of national standing.
That recognition is cast in terms of hydrogen, and green ammonia is how GGE realises it. Ammonia is hydrogen made storable, shippable and directly usable: hydrogen drawn from water and combined with nitrogen from the air, in a molecule agriculture and industry already depend on. What the region is recognised for is what this site is built to produce. The case for green ammonia is explained on The Boolathana Project page; here it rests first on the resource itself, and on where the measured record places that resource against the market operator’s own benchmark.
For comparison, NEOM in Saudi Arabia sits at 7.0 to 7.5 metres per second, and the Pilbara at 6.5 to 7.0.
SoDAR
Boolathana’s wind was modelled before it was measured. The measurements came in higher.
It has been measured on the ground by two independent instruments, then long-term-corrected against decades of reanalysis data.
A SoDAR unit has recorded wind directly at 150 metres since July 2023, its data managed by Fulcrum 3D, and a 130-metre meteorological mast was installed in October 2025, its 150-metre figure extrapolated from the instrument profile. Both measured at ten-minute intervals through April 2026. The records were analysed by wind consultants Wind Pioneers and long-term-corrected against ERA5 and MERRA2 reanalysis, using ten nodes of each surrounding the site across periods from 1995 to 2026, with results expressed as 20-year statistics.
The two systems return 150-metre wind speeds of 8.89 and 9.02 metres per second, disagreeing by about 0.13 of a metre per second.
What the record shows is not just strength but timing. Both instruments independently show wind falling to a morning trough, building through the afternoon, and holding strong overnight, strongest across the very hours solar produces nothing. The measured correlation between the two resources is −0.24.
Neither figure alone makes the site. Together they mean the two resources cover each other rather than peaking at once and leaving the same hours empty. The same seven-year hourly record that underpins the site’s dispatch modelling, covering 2016 to 2022 across 61,368 observations, puts a number on how rarely they fail together: the longest continuous period in which combined output fell to zero was twelve hours, a single mid-winter overnight, with only one event exceeding ten hours in the entire record.
Wind and Solar Diurnal Profiles - Boolathana
Peak Output is not the test
A renewable site is judged not by how much it can generate at its best, but by how consistently it delivers across the year.
The measure is the load factor: the kilowatt-hours actually delivered to the plant over a year, against what the installed capacity could produce if it ran flat out.
A high load factor means the plant runs closer to full capacity more of the time, which is what makes continuous industrial production possible.
Two things work against the load factor, namely variability and intermittence. Variability is the predictable pattern, day into night, season into season, whereas intermittence is the unpredictable part, passing cloud, still air.
Both leave gaps in supply, and when generation exceeds what the plant can use, the surplus is spilled and lost.
At Boolathana, the two resources are offset: when one runs low the other is at work, keeping supply continuous without the storage a single-resource site would need to cover the same hours.
Wind that works at night
Most high-quality renewable sites are solar-led, and their output falls to zero every night. The deeper the reliance on solar, the more storage must be built to bridge the overnight hours. Boolathana’s wind peaks overnight, averaging approximately 10.2 metres per second between 6pm and 5am.
The corollary matters as much. Wind that blows through the middle of the day, when solar is already at full output, adds less than it appears: it arrives when the plant is already supplied, and much of it is spilled. A high wind capacity factor is not on its own an advantage. Wind that arrives when solar does not is an advantage, and Boolathana’s does.
Why coastal solar performs better
Solar output is highest at moderate temperatures, close to 25°C, and falls away as panels heat beyond that. Inland sites that look excellent on irradiance alone often run through sustained periods above 40°C, where hourly output drops and heat stress shortens equipment life.
Boolathana is coastal. The ocean moderates temperature through the year, and the region’s low rainfall gives a high count of cloud-free days. The result is strong, usable irradiance without the heat penalty that erodes it elsewhere.
Where the resource ranks
AEMO’s 2026 Integrated System Plan places wind capacity factors of 45 per cent and above in its highest resource-quality band.
Wind Pioneers’ base case for Boolathana models a net P50 capacity factor of 48.71 per cent, which sits 3.71 percentage points above that threshold.
AEMO has not assessed Boolathana, and Western Australia sits outside the National Electricity Market, so the comparison is indicative rather than like-for-like, but it places the resource in the top band by the market operator’s own measure.
The generation mix has been optimised by Genesis, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Technip Energies: 55.5 per cent wind to 44.5 per cent solar, the balance that holds the combined capacity factor highest and keeps the firming requirement small. The assessment remains pre-feasibility work, and GGE intends to carry it to a bankable energy yield study before final investment decision.
What the record supports
Taken together, the site’s characteristics point to one conclusion. Boolathana can supply a continuous industrial load from renewable generation alone, without the scale of storage that off-grid renewable projects normally need to bridge the hours their resource cannot cover.
That is what makes green ammonia possible here. An ammonia plant is only economic if it runs continuously, and running continuously on renewables is the central problem of the industry. Boolathana’s resource answers it at the source, rather than through equipment built to compensate.