Australia’s tallest wind turbines send first power to the grid

The 180MW Dulacca wind farm, featuring some of the tallest wind turbines ever installed in Australia, has officially sent its first power to the grid in in Queensland’s Western Downs region, the traditional lands of the Barunggam people.

Octopus Australia on the weekend announced the milestone “registration and first export of energy” from the 43-turbine project it has built with RES and Vestas.

Energy Queensland, too, marked the occasion, praising on LinkedIn a “mammoth” joint effort in getting the project connected to the grid.

Dulacca is one of a growing number of Australian renewables projects now owned by UK-based renewables giant Octopus, and has a long term off-take deal with Queensland government-owned utility, CleanCo.

As RenewEconomy reported here, that deal – in which CleanCo committed to take 70 per cent, or 126MW, of the power produced by Dulacca – helped it become one of the very few large-scale wind or solar projects to land finance in Australia in 2021.

Octopus said on LinkedIn that the powering up of the Dulacca project marks an important mileston in its Australian strategy.

“With wind, solar and storage assets secured in QLD, NSW and VIC, Octopus Australia is building a portfolio of energy assets which model what a future clean energy generation base will look like in Australia,” Octopus.

“Dulacca, along with our storage and integrated solar developments across the NEM, are a great example of how an integrated, multi-technology portfolio can offer truly unique and differentiated PPA products to our energy customers which drives sustainable value to our investors.”