The first shipment of massive wind turbine blades for Neoen’s 157MW Kaban wind farm in north Queensland arrived at the Port of Cairns late last week – a sight to behold, captured and shared by state energy minister Mick de Brenni.
The huge turbine blades – which measure 79 metres in length, each – will help make up 28 V162 wind turbines, which at 5.6MW each will be the biggest in Australia to date by capacity, and height (225 metres “tip height”), and trump GE’s 5.3MW turbines installed at the Bango wind farm in New South Wales.
Not for long, though. Tilt Renewables’ 396MW Rye Park wind farm, near Yass in the NSW Southern Tablelands, will feature 66 Vestas turbines rated at 6MW each.
For now, however, it’s Queensland’s time to shine.
“The 79-metre, 32-tonne blades are part of the wind farm construction supporting more than 250 jobs in far north Queensland, and will deliver enough renewable energy to power 96,000 Queensland homes,” said de Brenni in a LinkedIn post alongside a video of the shipment.
“This project comes on the back of a $40 million investment by Queensland’s publicly-owned Powerlink to upgrade the transmission line between Cairns and Townsville from 132kV to 275kV.
“The Kaban wind farm will help power the North and keep Queensland on track to meet our 50% renewables target by 2030, and importantly, it will create more jobs for Queenslanders.”
The delivery of the blades follows the shipment, last month, of turbine tower parts for Kaban.
The huge metal tubes were snapped arriving at the North Queensland port by CleanCo, the Queensland state government-owned gen-tailer that is contracted to buy the output of the Kaban wind farm.
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