Offshore wind plans boosted as developers fathom full Gippsland potential

One of a handful of wind energy projects proposed for Victoria’s Gippsland coast, the region recently earmarked to lead Australia’s long-awaited entry into offshore wind, has been been expanded in size to just over 2GW.

BlueFloat Energy and Energy Estate said on Thursday that their joint venture Greater Gippsland Offshore Wind Project, located in the Bass Strait off Victoria’s south-eastern coast, was now proposed to have a generating capacity of 2.08GW, up from 1.2GW.

The companies – which together are developing more than 6GW of offshore wind in Australia and more than 10GW in Australia and New Zealand combined – say the update to the Greater Gippsland project follows a detailed analysis of the investigation area and its potential for offshore wind.

They say the decision to significantly boost the generation output of the wind farm was influenced by the available grid capacity, accelerated retirement of coal plants, and the Labor Albanese government’s open support for renewables.

“Projects like the Greater Gippsland Offshore Wind Project will build on the momentum for the accelerated retirement of brown coal-fired power stations and complement the existing and planned transmission infrastructure investments in Gippsland,” said BlueFloat country manager Nick Sankey.

“There is also clear political will and a strong appetite for the necessary renewables-led economic evolution that is coming; this was extremely evident at the successful and well attended Gippsland New Energy Conference held in Sale in August,” he said.

The companies, which recently commissioned an online simulation of the offshore wind farm’s layout say the water depth at the proposed project site means that bottom-fixed technology will be used for the turbines.

The changes to the project follow last month’s “momentous” news that the federal government had officially commenced the process to declare Gippsland, in Victoria, as Australia’s first zone for offshore wind project development.

The Bass Strait Gippsland region, which was also singled out for priority development by the former Morrison government, has attracted more than 6,000MW of potential projects to the development pipeline.

See RenewEconomy’s Offshore Wind Farm Map of Australia

These include Macquarie’s Green Investment Group, looking to build a 1,000MW Great Southern wind project, and the massive 2,200MW Star of the South project, which is being developed by Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners, Cbus and its original Australian co-founders Andy Evans, Terry Kallis and Peter Sgardelis – and which is tipped to be the very first cab off the rank to be built.

Spain-based BlueFloat Energy and Australia’s Energy Estate announced their plans to partner in the development of offshore wind projects in Australian waters in December of 2021, at the time with at least 4,300MW of capacity in mind.

The since expanded portfolio of proposed projects includes a 1.4GW floating wind farm off the coast of the New South Wales Hunter region and a 1.6GW project off the coast of Wollongong, also in NSW.

BlueFloat is already developing several European offshore wind projects, including in waters off Spain, Portugal, Italy and Scotland and has specialised in the deployment of floating offshore projects.