“It’s nuts:” Wind developer forced to truck giant transformer thousands of kilometres after port refusal

One of the biggest renewable energy developers in Australia says it is being forced to truck a giant transformer nearly 2,000 kms to its project site after a closer major port refused to take delivery, highlighting one of the “real-world” logistics problems blighting investment.

The Australian Wind Energy 2026 conference in Melbourne this week heard no shortage of discussion on the range of roadblocks holding back progress on the delivery of much needed new wind capacity, spanning from nervous investors, to rising costs of finance, to lumpy logistics.

But the costly and complicated process of getting the huge pieces of kit that make up a wind farm from port to project site, often across multiple states and through numerous local government areas, has been a recurring theme.

“Quite often what is forgotten is that the wind industry in Australia is generally … [it is] private capital flowing in into these developments,” said Danny Nielsen, senior vice president and country head of Australia and New Zealand at Danish wind giant Vestas.

“So it’s generally fixed time, generally fixed prices, and when getting to the really, really big projects, it’s really a logistic puzzle that we need to go through.

“Everyone is so focused on their own schedule – that they need to get that equipment to site on those dates and all that – and there’s very little cooperation from a portfolio perspective when you look at the road uses, as simple a thing as …police escorts, and all that… 

“And then when the project gets that big, you actually sometimes goes over a council cycle as well, so you have local elections and all that coming in, so the risk that you take on in that period of time actually becomes … quite heavy.”

But it was Acen Australia managing director David Pollington who offered the most stark illustration of how badly industry and governments need to work together to find a solution around transport for wind projects to realise the sort of scale-up in development needed to usher out coal.

“One classic example, we’re part of the [National Electricity Market]. We’re building an asset for the NEM in Northern New South Wales, and Queensland doesn’t want the transformer to come into Brisbane, so it has to come to South Australia. That’s crazy,” Pollington told a panel discussion on Wednesday.

Acen Australia is developing a number of projects in northern New South Wales, including the second stage of its huge New England solar farm and battery, and the Valley of the Winds wind farm, which has secured approvals and is preparing for construction.

Back in April 2022, Acen reported that the first of two 150 tonne electricity transformers was being trucked to the first stage of the New England solar project by a 13 axle trailer that would pick it up from Brisbane before transporting it to Uralla, via Tamworth. 

It’s unclear whether the transformer in question is headed to New England stage 2 or is part of early logistics planning for Valley of the Winds – and Acen did not respond to Renew Economy’s requests for further information.

Nor is it clear why, in 2026, a transformer cannot be delivered via Brisbane given two 150 tonne machines were delivered from that port to the solar project site in New England in 2022.

The only thing that has changed since then is the Queensland government, and there has been talk that other projects are facing similar logistic issues, particularly around approvals for the transfer of large equipment, such as turbine blades, from the Department of Transport and Main Roads.

Pollington’s experience resonated with Aquila Clean Energy APAC’s general manager of energy markets, Thomas Schmitz, who told the conference on Thursday morning that it was further evidence of the Australian energy market’s deep-rooted coordination and collaboration problem.

“As a country, we just don’t work well together,” Schmitz told the conference as part of a separate panel on Thursday.

“They’re building a wind farm in northern New South Wales and the Port of Brisbane is refusing to accept the transformer, so now they have to deliver the transformer into South Australia and drive it up to New South Wales. That’s just nuts, you know.

“Those, those are the real world problems that we are dealing with as an industry.”

As Renew Economy has reported, moving wind turbine parts from port to site is not getting any easier, as tighter squeezes and steeper sites test the ingenuity of trucking companies and the patience of regional road users.

According to a paper written by Icubed Consulting directors Nick Canto and Rod Hetherington, transporting a 5-6 megawatt wind turbine with a 150 metre hub height and blades of 85m or more needs between 12 and 14 over-size-over-mass vehicle trips.

Each of those trips needs an escort – sometimes including police – the makeup and number of which differ depending on the state and the size of the piece of kit.

New South Wales, for one, is throwing money at the problem, spending $128 million on a ‘Port to REZ’ program to upgrade 19 roads and highways, turbine parts and other “oversize equipment” like transformers can get to state’s renewable energy zones.

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