Singapore’s Vena Energy joins rush to Australia offshore wind with Gippsland project

Singapore-based Vena Energy – which built the first large scale solar farm in South Australia and the first big battery in Queensland – is poised to join the huge rush for a share of Australia’s nascent offshore wind industry.

Vena Energy revealed last month in an investors briefing that it is developing 4GW of offshore wind projects in “key markets such as Japan, North Asia, Australia, and Southeast Asia.”

The company told RenewEconomy last week that its offshore wind ambitions in the Asia-Pacific were in fact considerably bigger than that – 10GW – and it was looking specifically at Gippsland, poised to be the first declared offshore wind zone in Australia.

“Vena Energy is currently developing a pipeline of approximately 10GW of offshore wind projects across the Asia Pacific region, including the Gippsland region in (Victoria), Australia,” a spokesperson said. He said the company had been working on the projects since 2017.  “We are unable to comment further at this point.”

RenewEconomy understands that the Gippsland project is tentatively called Blue Marlin and is scaled at between 500MW and 1000MW, although the potential size of such projects have a big range of possibilities as most are up to a decade away from construction start and turbine sizes may jump significantly in the meantime.

Vena’s project would be the fifth in the Gippsland renewable energy zone, along with the 2.2GW Star of the South project, which is widely regarded as the most advanced project to date.

Others in the area are Corio’s 2.5GW Great Eastern project, the 1.4GW Great Gippsland project advanced by BlueFloat Energy and Energy Estate, and Floatation Energy’s 1.5GW Seadragon project.

See RenewEconomy’s Offshore Wind Farm Map of Australia

But there may be more to come. Oil giant Shell is believed to be studying the area, while the world’s biggest offshore wind company, the Denmark-based Orsted, sent some executives to a renewables conference in Sale in Gippsland last week, where the focus was largely on offshore wind.

Federal climate and energy minister Chris Bowen announced last month that the federal government would look to declare Gippsland as the first offshore wind zone in Australia, which is expected to happen after two months of consultation.

That will allow companies to move forward with full feasibility studies, a process likely to cost in the realm of $200 million. The federal government has identified another five offshore zones – Hunter and Illawarra in NSW, Portland in Victoria, Bass in Tasmania, and Bunbury and Perth in Western Australia.

Victoria wants its first offshore wind production by 2028, and up to 9GW by 2040 to help fill the gap left by its ageing coal generators.

Vena Energy built the 95MW Tailem Bend solar farm in South Australia, the first large scale solar project in that state, and is about to begin construction on the 87MW stage two of that solar project, as well as a 41.5MW one hour battery at the same site.

It recently completed the first large scale big battery in Queensland, the 100MW/150MWh Wandoan South battery that is being operated and dispatched  by AGL Energy.