Windlab breaks Australian renewables drought with lowest cost wind farm

A near 12-month investment drought in large scale renewable energy in Australia has been broken after Canberra-based Windlab secured a $50 million financing deal for a 19.5MW wind farm in Victoria.

coonooer

The financing of Coonooer Bridge wind farm west of Bendigo comes after it became one of three winners of a reverse auction held by the ACT government – delivering a locked in price of $81.50 for 20 years.

Roger Price, the CEO of Windlab, says the project will deliver the cheapest wind energy in Australia, beating even the highly rated Snowtown projects owned by New Zealand firm TrustPower in South Australia.

Snowtown reportedly delivered electricity in its first year below $80/MWh, but Coonooer Bridge will effectively deliver electricity at below $70/MWh in its first year.

“At $81.50 fixed for 20 years, this electricity is more than cost competitive with any form of new build conventional generation,” Price said in a statement on Tuesday. “It’s a phenomenal resource,” he told RenewEconomy later.

The financing will come from Japan’s biggest wind farm company Eurus Energy, which will emerge with an 80 per cent stake in the project, in exchange for providing the upfront equity. Eurus also owns the 50MW Hallett 5 wind farm, and about 2.4GW of wind farms in Europe and Asia and the Americas.

About 70 per cent of the cost of the wind project will be bank finance provided by ANZ.

Windlab will retain about 16 per cent of the project, while around 30 neighbours of the 6-turbine wind farm will own 4 per cent, under an innovative community ownership program we wrote about here.

“This is a win-win for the local community which wholeheartedly supports this development, for our company, for the residents of the ACT and all who support renewable energy,” Price said.

“This location has both strong and consistent winds. It will produce energy nearly 90% of the time and these conditions have attracted our major international investor, Eurus.”

ACT environment minister Simon Corbell, who has masterminded the push to 90 per cent renewable energy in the ACT by 2020, and driven much of the large scale renewable investment in Australia in recent years, said the project will set new standards for local community engagement, and a new benchmark in Australia for low-cost renewable energy.”

The other wind farms to secure feed-in tariffs under the auction held by the ACT government are French-based Neoen, in conjunction with Australia’s Megawatt Capital, who will build a 100MW wind farm at Hornsdale in South Australia, and RES Australia and GE, who are building the Ararat wind farm.

Mark Schneider, from Megawatt Capital, said financial close was expected in July, with the project to be completed by early 2017.

These are the first major wind energy projects to be financed in Australia since the election of the Abbott government, its appointment of climate science denier and pro nuclear advocate Dick Warburton to head a review of the renewable energy target, and its subsequent efforts to cut the target by nearly half.

Windlab has selected Vestas as both the EPC contractor and wind turbine supplier for the project. Windlab will continue to manage the project through its global operation centre based in Canberra. Coonooer Bridge will begin construction soon and is expected to be completed early next year.

 

 

Comments

7 responses to “Windlab breaks Australian renewables drought with lowest cost wind farm”

  1. Ken Dyer Avatar
    Ken Dyer

    It is as I expected, the Abbott Government’s resistance to renewable energy is increasingly marginalising its stance on coal.

    However, what I am curious about is why didn’t they apply for funding under Greg Hunt’s Emissions Reduction* Fund. Surely a farm of windmills is a better proposition than planting or preserving a farm of trees, with the added benefit that when the wind blows, power is generated offsetting fossil fuel carbon emissions, unlike trees that just fall over.
    *Reduction: the adjective is used to describe the name of the fund, not necessarily how effective it might be in offsetting or reducing carbon emissions.

    1. Andrew Thaler Avatar
      Andrew Thaler

      good points Ken!

      1. Brian Innes Avatar
        Brian Innes

        Gents – renewable energy is not eligible for ERF

        1. Andrew Thaler Avatar
          Andrew Thaler

          yes, and isn’t that ironic when one considers that RE provides ACTUAL emissions reduction… better than ‘not’ chopping down a forest for a few years while some dodgy carbon ‘offset’ credits are traded 🙁

        2. Coley Avatar
          Coley

          Now why is that I wonder, you would think including RE in such a fund would be a no brainer?

  2. Jon Avatar
    Jon

    At close to $2.6m/MW this is not particularly cheap! Snowtown was quoted at closer to $1.6m/MW yet it’s PPA is higher and is CPI indexed (reportedly). Something doesn’t add up? Must be very low expected returns for the investors.

    1. Giles Avatar

      Financials would be influenced by amount of debt in each project, and the wind resource. We don’t have details of either. Also, would community owners be seeking as high RoE as TrustPower? Doubt it.

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