Crudine Ridge wind farm starts sending power to the grid in NSW

Small signs of life have begun appearing from CWP Renewables’ Crudine Ridge wind farm near Mudgee, NSW, as the 170MW project starts to power up.

The graph below from Global Roam’s Paul McArdle shows the wind farm delivering small blips of power to the National Electricity Market over the past several days, as one of three renewable energy projects to join the grid this week, including the Moorabool wind farm and Yatpool solar farm in Victoria.

Crudine Ridge wind farm was developed by CWP Renewables in conjunction with Partners Group; under their Grassroots Renewable Energy Platform. The project connects to the network owned by Transgrid.

It was built by a consortium of GE and Zenviron, with debt financing provided by Clean Energy Finance Corporation, SMBC and Westpac and has a power purchase agreement with Meridian Energy.

CWP Renewables is a seasoned player in the Australian wind energy market, with projects including Sapphire and Boco Rock in its operation portfolio, the Bango wind farm under construction in NSW, and the Uungala wind farm set to begin construction in 2021, also in NSW.

CWP is also leading the huge Asia Renewable Energy Hub consortium in the Pilbara region of W.A. which is looking at building 15GW of wind and solar capacity to support local industry and to export to Asia either as “green hydrogen” or through a sub-sea cable.