Another wind project emerges to tap into proposed Copperstring line opening up north Queensland

Ace Power is investigating an area west of Julia Creek for a potential wind project site, with the main attraction of the outback location being the proposed 330kV section of the long-promised Copperstring transmission line. 

The mid-northern Queensland location is tucked between Cloncurry to the west, and east of two other massive wind proposals by Potentia Energy and Irish developer DP Energy. 

Ace Power is looking at building a 450 megawatt (MW) project, comparatively small compared to the giga-scale projects often proposed at such locations, and is currently doing preliminary feasibility assessments.

It’s not the developer’s only proposal set up to tap into the Copperstring transmission line. 

The 1,040 MW Pa Rooga wind farm and co-located battery is on the drawing board for Hughenden to the east, and about 60km south of Julia Creek is the Kynuna wind project, according to RenewMap.

Like Julia Creek, all are in the earliest stages of investigation. 

The 1,100km, $14 billion CopperString transmission project being built by the state government turns into a 500kV section from Hughenden to the coast, and it’s drawing a lot of attention from renewables developers.

Not only are they keen to tap the new line’s capacity but the sparsely populated outback Queensland locations make setting up shared benefits agreements before lodging development applications, as the state now controversially requires, much easier. 

And although the Liberal state government does not like renewables, the Copperstring line runs through regions heavy in mineral resources and unlocking these is a cause supported by both sides of politics.

Julia Creek is home to one of these big mining projects QEM wants to develop a vanadium mine and oil field, backed by wind, and some capacity of solar and storage. 

QEM signed up Enel Green Power Australia, before it changed its name to Potentia Energy,  in January last year to develop 1000 MW of wind, some capacity of solar and storage to support it. 

Right next door to that is DP Energy’s Windy Plains Renewable Energy Park (REP), which proposes a massive 1,400MW of wind generation and a 500 MW, 2,000 megawatt-hour battery energy storage system (BESS).