Plans to build an up to 224MW wind farm and 100MW big battery with up to four hours of storage in northern Tasmania are seeking the green light from the federal government, to help power the island state’s green hydrogen plans.
The Bell Bay wind farm is being proposed by Equis within the Northeast Tasmanian Renewable Energy Zone (REZ), 6 km northeast of George Town and 1 km southwest of Beechford.
It will include the most powerful wind turbines to be installed in Australia, with 28 eight megawatt machines that will have a tip height of up to 270 metres, and a hub height of up to 180 metres.
By way of comparison, Australia’s biggest wind project, the 1.3 gigawatt Golden Plains facility in Victoria, features 6.2 MW turbines that have a hub height off 149 metres.
The project was opened to public comment late last week, as part of its assessment under the federal government’s Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act.
The application referral says the project intends to make use of Tasmania’s “excellent wind resource in a region that has a long history of energy generation and industrial development.”
Equis also notes that the project is well placed to support federal Labor’s investment in the Bell Bay Hydrogen Hub, located just 8 km to the south and adjacent to the wind farm’s proposed grid connection point.
Map for Bell Bay wind farm and battery. Image: Equis Developments
The Bell Bay Hydrogen Hub has been earmarked by the Albanese government as one of Australia’s greatest green hydrogen hopes, a hope backed up with $70 million of federal funding at the start of the year, on top of $230 million in state government funding.
Federal energy minister Chris Bowen said at the time the money from the two governments would go towards the development of “Common User Infrastructure,” or those things necessary to create a hydrogen hub, such as hydrogen storage, transport and export infrastructure.
Bowen also said it the Bell Bay Hydrogen Hub was expected to be operational by 2028 and to produce 45,000 tonnes of green hydrogen a year from that date – a task that will require need a lot of renewable energy.
Bell Bay is part of a portfolio of Equis’ Australian projects that includes nearly 2 GW of wind projects across the NEM and five big battery storage projects spread across another four states.
The original Equis, a Singapore-based company that built South Australia’s first solar farm at Tailem Bend, among other projects, was bought by Global Infrastructure Partners in 2018 and later renamed Vena Energy.
The Equis brand was reborn in 2022 in the form of Equis Development, featuring some of its original executives including co-founder and CEO David Russell and with backing from the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority and the huge Ontario Teachers Pension Plan.
The developer’s Tassie wind plans had always aimed to kick off near Bell Bay, but originally with the 42MW Low Head wind farm. As the company explains in its referral documents, the new, much bigger project shares some land with the previously approved Low Head project, which is no longer proceeding.
If approved Equis wind farm and battery would also be strategically close the Bell Bay Advanced Manufacturing Zone, which in late 2023 was named by Sun Cable as its preferred site to make the thousands of kilometres of high voltage sub-sea cable needed to connect the world’s biggest solar and battery project to Singapore.
Elsewhere, Equis is behind development of one of the biggest grid-scale batteries in Australia, at the Melbourne Renewable Energy Hub in Victoria, that will total 600 MW and 1600 MWh and is being co-funded by the Victorian government’s State Electricity Commission, or SEC.
According to the Bell Bay wind farm project website, Equis is awaiting approval from the Tasmanian planning department as well as the federal environment minister.
The developer is hoping to have gained all approvals in 2026 and have the wind farm operations by 2029, creating around 800 jobs during the course of construction of the project.
