Construction underway at Tasmania’s Granville Harbour wind farm

A 112MW Tasmanian wind farm that will deliver a one-third increase to the state’s wind power capacity is under construction, with the final parts of the project’s turbine towers arriving in Burnie earlier this month, and the last of the turbine blades due to arrive in May.

The $280 million project is being developed by Palisade Investment Partners on a cattle farm on Tasmania’s west coast, where it will tap that region’s famous roaring forties winds, which blow in from the Southern Ocean.

The wind farm reached financial close in July last year, after a $59 million investment from the Clean Energy Finance Corporation.

As we reported at the time, the project was initially developed by Westcoast Wind, which was bought out by Palisade in February 2018, some months after the two companies negotiated a long-term PPA for the wind farm’s output with Hydro Tasmania.

Hydro Tasmania says Granville Harbour will contribute to its plans to double the Apple Isle’s renewable energy capacity and make it the Battery of the Nation.

The wind farm will be connected to the Tasmanian grid via a new 11km transmission line that will join up to a connection point at the existing Reece Dam.

Granville Harbour’s 31 3.6MW wind turbines, which will stand 200m tall, are being supplied by Vestas. Commercial operations were scheduled to commence in Q4, 2019.