Final concrete turbine foundations poured for Australia’s biggest wind farm

The last of the concrete foundations have been poured at the site of the massive MacIntyre wind farm in Queensland’s Southern Downs region, ready to accommodate 162 wind turbines for what will be – at least for a time – Australia’s biggest wind project.

The latest milestone for the 923MW project, was noted by project developer and owner Acciona Energia and its contractor Holcim. The LinkedIn post notes that the project team reused more than 235,000 tonnes of the rock excavated for the wind project to create on-site concrete aggregate for the turbine foundations.

“This reduced the need for extraction and transportation from off-site quarries,” Acciona says.

Acciona and the Clean Energy Council also posted to LinkedIn a video touring the site of the huge wind farm, which also has a number of turbines already built.

The MacIntyre wind farm is majority owned by Spanish giant Acciona Energia and 30 per cent owned by Ark Energy, part of the Korea Zinc group, which will use the output to help power its Sun Metals zinc refinery near Townsville.

Acciona is also planning to add the 1GW Herries Range wind farm to Southern Downs precinct, taking its total generation capacity to what is referred to as the “Big Mac” project of more than 2,000MW, making it one of the largest in the southern hemisphere.

Victoria’s Golden Plains wind farm will ultimately be bigger than MacIntyre, at 1,330 MW, but is being built over two stages.