Enel boss visits energy giant’s first Australian wind farm in time for first concrete pours

Italian energy giant Enel Green Power is completing its first concrete pours at its first Australian wind farm, the 76MW Flat Rock project in Western Australia, coinciding with a visit to Australia by its Rome-based CEO Salvatore Bernabei.

The visit by Bernabei is interesting, given speculation that Enel had offered its renewable energy assets in Australia up for sale.

But, in a post on LinkedIn this week, Bernabei was not giving anything away.

“Australia is a green field of opportunities for renewables,” he wrote. “There, I had the chance to visit Flat Rocks, Enel Green Power‘s first wind farm in the Country with 18 wind turbines that will provide aprox (sic) 315 GWh/year. A first step of many!”

The output of Flat Rocks, located near Kojonup, will help BHP achieve the equivalent of a 100 per cent renewable power supply for its Western Australian nickel operations, which are destined to supply EV makers such as Tesla that demand zero carbon supply chains.

BHP is also sourcing renewable power from the country’s best performing solar farm, the 100MW Merredin solar farm, and the planned Northern Goldfields solar project.

Enel Green Power is also the owner of the Bungala solar farms in South Australia, the biggest in that state, and the smaller 27MW Cohuna solar farm in Victoria.

A second stage of the Flat Rocks wind project, sized at up to 150MW, has been bought by Water Corporation and will be used to provide green power for the state owned water utility.