The Uungula wind farm has become the first wind project to join the grid in New South Wales in two and a half years, and just the second wind project in more than three years.
The 414 megawatt (MW) wind farm, which is in the middle of transporting hundreds of huge turbine parts from Newcastle to its construction site near Wellington in the state’s central west, has entered the Australian Energy Market Operator’s grid management system.
This means that the project is now registered, and is a precursor to the first energisation, the first generation and then a lengthy commissioning process.
According to Geoff Eldridge, from GPE NEMLog, it is the first wind farm to enter the grid management system in NSW since the Crookwell 3 wind farm in May, 2024. Before that, the Rye Park and the Flyers Creek wind farms entered the system in August, 2023.
Uungula is being built by Squadron Energy, controlled by iron ore billionaire and green energy evangelist Andrew Forrest, who is also busy adding several gigawatts of wind, solar and battery storage in the Pilbara to help his mining operations reach his ambitious target of “real zero” emissions by 2030.
However, Uungula is currently the only wind project under construction in NSW, which poses a problem because of the urgent need for new capacity to allow the state’s remaining coal-fired power generators to close, starting with the planned exit of the already twice delayed Eraring coal fired generator in 2029.
There is a huge pipeline of wind projects in NSW, including many that have already been granted grid access rights in the south-west renewable energy zone, and others that have won either state or federal underwriting agreements.
However, the lack of big corporate buyers – including from the big energy retailers that intend to shut their coal fired power plants – has meant that none of these wind projects have yet reached financial close or committed to construction.
Uungula, on the other hand, has a 15-year power purchase deal for around half its output with the federal government-owned Snowy Hydro that was announced in 2022. The power will be unsold to NSW transport as part of its electrification plans.
So far, five of the 69 turbines at Uungula have been erected, and according to a post on LinkedIn last week, the company was around one third of the way through transporting 900 giant turbine parts to the site.
It is understood that the substation is nearly completed and will soon be energised, allowing the first generation to commence. The project is expected to be completed mid next year.
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