Final concrete foundation poured as Australia’s biggest wind project hits key milestones

Australia’s biggest wind project at Golden Plains has reached two significant milestones, with the final concrete pour completed for the 215 turbine foundations, and the last of 122 turbines lifted into place to signal the end of construction of stage 1 of the project.

Golden Plains will be sized at 1.33 gigawatts (GW) when complete, and the 756 megawatt first stage is already injecting up to around 600 MW into the grid at times, and will soon graduate to a new “hold point” that will allow it to inject up to 732 MW at any one time.

“Last week, we lifted the 122nd turbine, which is the end of stage one,” Andrew Riggs, the Australian managing partner of project owner told Renew Economy this week. “We’re starting lifting in stage two just today.”

The concrete foundations for the Vestas V162-6.2MW turbines have been sized at up to 950 m3 in areas with high water tables, and they are also the biggest in the country to date, according to Riggs. “A shout out to MPK for their performance there. They’ve done a great job in that space.”

Riggs says that the last hold point testing for stage one of the project will occur in mid-September, with grid testing on the first turbines from the second stage to commence in late February. He says the second stage will be lifting turbines into place for another year.

“The team at AEMO Victoria have done a fantastic job ensuring the project has run to time on its commissioning programme, they really deserve recognition for their efforts,” he said.

TagEnergy, which has an 85 per cent stake in the Golden Plains project, announced earlier this week it had bought Ace Power, an early stage developer with a number of wind, battery, and solar hybrid projects around the country, boosting its total pipeline to more than 10 GW.

See: Owner of Australia’s biggest wind farm buys massive pipeline of battery, wind and solar projects

TagEnergy’s next project will be a 150 MW, 600 MWh battery at the Golden Plains site, with battery and potentially wind projects identified in Queensland and NSW the next to move.

Golden Plains was financed – at least the first stage – on a purely “merchant” basis, which means it had no pre-existing off take arrangements with any customers. Few developers have the resources, or are prepared to do this, and the fact that it occurred in the country’s biggest wind project to date is remarkable.

The company has since locked in a number of different off-take arrangements. ITK principal David Leitch, the co-host of Renew Economy’s Energy Insiders podcast, notes in this week’s episode that “if you build wind farms, they (the customers) will come.

But precious few are being built at the moment, and no new wind projects have reached financial close in Australia this year.

“We have succeeded in doing things that others can’t do. When we (TagEnergy) decided to invest in Australia with a gigawatt scale wind farm (the first such project in Australia), it was a very tough bet and very ambitious goal,” TagEnergy co-founder and boss Franck Woitiez told Renew Economy earlier this week.

“And we’re now delivering the 1.33 GW Golden Plain wind farm. So, I wouldn’t say we always like complexity, but I think we can differentiate ourselves with things that are a bit more innovative, different, or eventually complex.”

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