First turbine goes up at Australia’s largest wind farm, foundations laid for big battery

After a sod-turning ceremony in April, TagEnergy says it has started erecting the first of 122 turbines that will make up the first 756MW of the massive Golden Plains wind farm, and the foundations have been laid for its big battery.

In a LinkedIn post and video, TagEnergy updated the construction journey of the project, that will be Australia’s largest wind farm, at 1300MW, once fully complete.

“Golden Plains Wind Farm in Victoria, Australia will be the largest single wind farm in the southern hemisphere when completed,” the post says.

“We reckon a mega-project like this deserves to be documented and celebrated.”

As Victorian energy minister Lily D’Ambrosio says in the video, Golden Plains is expected to deliver about 9% of the state’s energy needs once all 215 of its turbines are up and generating.

The huge project will also feature a big battery, to add flexibility and stability to the grid, for which Tag says it has started laying the concrete foundations.

Golden Plains has been a long time in the development pipeline, most of it under the stewardship of its previous owner, WestWind, before being bought up by TagEnergy just over a year ago.

The project has also been dogged by a series of unsuccessful legal challenges, headed up by the lawyer behind similar battles against fellow Victorian wind project, Bald Hills and against the Delburn wind farm in the Latrobe Valley.

The Victorian government stepped in in June 2022 to amend state planning to allow the wind farm to proceed in the face of the protracted legal challenges. The plaintiffs withdrew all complaints the following month.