Last massive turbine goes up at Queensland wind farm – Australia’s tallest

Renewable energy developer RES Australia has reached a major milestone in the construction of the 180MW Dulacca wind farm in Queensland’s south west, with the installation of the last of the project’s 43 turbines.

RES marked the occasion on LinkedIn on Wednesday, with a snapshot of the final huge turbine standing in place at the project site in Queensland’s Western Downs region.

The V150-4.2MW wind turbines, supplied and installed by Vestas, are said to be the tallest installed in Australia, to date, at nearly 250 metres from base to tip. They may soon be trumped in size by the 6.2MW Vestas turbines to be installed at the Golden Plains wind farm in Victoria, but not in height. They will be 230m.

In a statement on LinkedIn, RES explains that a string of 25 connected flags hanging from the crane in the image above represents all of the different nationalities involved in the project, built on the lands of the Barunggam People.

“A wonderful representation, with a personal touch, of a team motivated to drive Australia towards a clean energy future,” the post says.

Dulacca is one of a growing number of Australian renewables projects now owned by UK-based renewables giant Octopus, and has a long term off-take deal with Queensland government-owned utility, CleanCo.

As RenewEconomy reported here, that deal – in which CleanCo committed to take 70 per cent, or 126MW, of the power produced by Dulacca – helped it become one of the very few large-scale wind or solar projects to land finance in Australia in 2021.

In May, Vestas posted a video of the first of the project’s 73.7 metre-long wind turbine blades being delivered to the project site. RES says construction of the project is expected to be completed in the second half of 2023.