Enormous Golden Plains wind turbine blades land in Geelong

The first of the 80 metre long blades that are soon to be features of the Golden Plains skyline have arrived in Geelong Port, stacked nose to tail on a cargo ship.

These are the first blades to come in for the enormous Golden Plains wind farm, which at 1.3 GW will be Australia’s largest.

The 122 Vestas 6.2 MW turbines being used in the $2 billion project are equally monumental.

The blades are 11m longer than any previously taken through Geelong, and the towers are 6.4m in diameter, requiring an up to 6.8m high clearance from port to site.

The first very first shipment, however, came in last month delivering tower parts, revealed by photos published on LinkedIn by heavy haulage company Rex J Andrews.

The 122 turbines will require 1,464 components be shipped on 22 vessels over the coming months, and stored at the Geelong port until October.

These include 366 blades, 732 tower sections and 122 individual powertrains consisting of the gearbox, generator, nacelles, and hubs.

The foundations for 39 turbines have been laid to date. 

The project will also feature a 300MW battery, although the planned storage duration has not been revealed.

TagEnergy managing partner Andrew Riggs says the farm will begin delivering power into the grid from 2025. 

TagEnergy owns 85 per cent of the project. Ingka Investments, the investment arm of Ingka Group, the world’s largest IKEA retailer, bought 15 per cent this year, and Snowy Hydro recently agreed to buy 40 per cent of the energy generated by the project.

Out the other side of the legal battles

Construction has been moving quickly since April after TagEnergy bought the project in 2022 and a series of legal challenges were resolved – by state government intervention. 

The idea of the Golden Plains wind farm has been hovering in the ether for years, however, after West Wind first proposed it some 15 years ago. 

The project was approved for development in 2018, but has been dogged by legal challenges. The final challenge failed to get a hearing in the High Court of Australia last year, having been defeated in the Victorian Supreme Court and, in August of 2020, the Court of Appeal.

The Victoria government stepped in after that to change state planning rules to let the wind farm go ahead, after further legal challenges were threatened. Those cases were dropped after the rule changes. 

TagEnergy then secured $175 million from the Clean Energy Finance Council (CEFC) for Stage 1, the single largest investment in a wind farm by the federal government’s green bank, which was accompanied by $1.8 billion of private sector funding.

This year TagEnergy announced extra community projects with a combined value of more than $300,000, jointly funded by Vestas, CPP, MPK and AusNet Services, to improve community safety and convenience.

Law firm Norton Rose Fulbright advised Vestas in relation to its role as EPC contractor on the project.