Moorabool wind farm begins construction in Victoria

The first sod of earth has been turned at the site of the 321MW Moorabool wind farm, being built near Ballan in central western Victoria by Goldwind Australia.

While preliminary site works began at in April, a ceremony on Friday marked the official start of construction on the first part of the project, the 150MW northern section called Moorabool North.

The $370 million project, which Goldwind Australia bought from WestWind Energy in 2016, is expected to power around 200,000 average Victorian homes each year – or as state energy minister Lily D’Amborsio put it in her Tweet, below, one in 10 homes in the state – once completed.

The beginning of construction of the wind farm – which was once listed on RenewEconomy’s tally of renewable energy projects that would not have survived if Abbott had scrapped the RET – coincides with the swearing in of the new Scott Morrison-led federal Coalition government, whose newly appointed energy minister, Angus Taylor, happens to be a vocal anti-wind energy campaigner.

Goldwind is also building a 530MW wind farm at Stockyard Hill, a project that last year stunned the clean energy industry by setting what was a new benchmark for renewables off-take deals in Australia, after Origin Energy signed a long-term power purchase agreement of below $55/MWh.