Gigawatt-scale Victoria wind farm, big battery joins queue for federal green tick

Plans to build a massive wind farm of up to 1.3GW of capacity and potentially a four-hour big battery in Victoria’s north have joined the queue for federal environmental approval.

The Cannie wind farm, being developed by Res Energy, was this week determined to be a controlled action under the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act, thus requiring assessment and approval from the federal environment minister before it can proceed.

The potentially huge up to 174 turbine project sits around 25km south of the Victoria-New South Wales border, in the Murray River Renewable Energy Zone (REZ). It would connect to the proposed Victoria-NSW Interconnector West (VNI-West) transmission line, according to documents submitted to the Victorian planning department.

The documents also detail plans for 200MW/800MWh battery energy storage system (BESS), which Res says “will help provide greater security in energy supply and may aid … the management of the Frequency Control Ancillary Services (FCAS) across this part of the NEM.”

The latest newsletter on the project, however, says the battery is “under investigation.”

Cannie wind farm would be installed across 17,000 hectares of private farmland mostly used for grazing and cropping, located around 33km west of Kerang and 25km south of the Murray River – on the traditional lands of the Wamba Wamba, Barapa Barapa and Wiran Peoples.

Res says all of the landowners within the wind farm’s proposed boundary have entered into preliminary agreements to host the project. The company is also investigating the feasibility of adding a battery energy storage system to the mix.

According to the project site, community information sessions were held in Quambatook and Lake Boga in February. An Environmental Effects Statement was submitted to the Victorian government in May.

The newsletter also says the number of turbines has been reduced from a maximum of 200 to 174, after preliminary constraints mapping of the site.

The EES for the project lists 16 flora and 30 fauna species that are listed as threatened under the EPBC Act that could be affected by the wind farm’s development. Another 38 migratory species are listed as known to occur in the referral area.