Construction work begins on first Latrobe Valley wind project, just one month after state takeover

The groundwork for the first of 33 turbines to be erected at the Delburn wind project, the first of its type in Victoria’s Latrobe Valley, has begun, just weeks after the state owned energy utility took control of the project.

Preparation work has been, although the turbine parts for the 205 megawatt (MW) project are not expected to start being delivered to the pine plantation site until next year.

Danish wind giant Vestas is supplying the 6.2 MW turbines which will have hub heights of 168m to stand above the pine plantation where they’ll be hosted.

The State Electricity Commission (SEC) bought the 205 MW Gippsland project in December, saying it would “invest around $650 million to take over the Delburn wind farm”, after the project stalled.

The SEC is developing it in partnership with the project originator, Osmi Australia.

The deal helped break a wind energy investment drought in 2025, with the December 23 deal making Delburn the first wind project to reach financial close in Victoria that year and just the third across Australia. (Two others – in W.A. and South Australia – were brought to FID in the preceding days).

Victoria’s renewable energy strategy is heavy on wind, but projects in the state have struggled to gain finance, partly due to transmission delays, planning issues, social licence and rising costs.

The start of construction on the first turbines marks a speedy turning point for the state, with the SEC moving fast to lodge the order soon after buying the Delburn project. 

Delburn is the SEC’s first wind farm, and will also be the first in Australia to be built within a pine plantation – although there are several projects that propose follow suit in New South Wales, as well as former Neoen project the 105 turbine Kentbrook Green Power Hub proposed for Victoria.

While the use of plantations, monocultures that don’t make good habitats for native animals, are popular options for wind projects as they limit the impact on native flora and fauna, the Delburn project in particular has been a hard sell for locals. 

It endured the 2020 vandalism of a meteorological mast installed at the site in the very early days of development.

The original proposal for Delburn was for a 300 MW wind farm with 53 turbines at a height of 250 metres, and spanning three separate council areas. Turbine numbers were then revised down several times, landing on 33 with a capacity of 180-200 MW in 2020.

A big battery proposal for the site was rejected, on the grounds of the potential for it to be a fire risk. A late-2022 Supreme Court challenge to the wind farm’s state planning approvals claimed the wind farm was in a bushfire prone area and too close to local homes.

With SEC support and construction now started, however, commissioning is planned for the fourth quarter of 2027.

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