Tasmania’s Granville Harbour wind farm now sending power to the grid

Tasmania’s 112MW Granville Harbour wind farm has started sending power to the grid – although just a fraction of the one-third increase to the state’s wind power capacity it will ultimately deliver.

As you can see on the chart below supplied by Paul McArdle from Global Roam, the providers of our popular NEM-Watch widget, first generation for the wind farm was recorded on February 1, and has gradually increased over the month to around 7MW on Tuesday.

The $280 million project is being developed by developers Palisade Investment Partners and by Royce Smith, whose cattle grazing land on Tasmania’s west coast is hosting the wind farm.

The first of the project’s 31 turbines was erected in late November of 2019, after what Smith described as a “long and challenging process” stretched across 10 years.

The project was initially being developed by Westcoast Wind, which was bought out by Palisade in February 2018, some months after the two companies negotiated a long-term PPA for the wind farm’s output with Hydro Tasmania. It reached financial close in July of 2018, after a $59 million investment from the Clean Energy Finance Corporation.

As we reported here in November, the project is on track to be completed entirely by mid-2020 and, once operational, will generate enough power to supply around 46,000 Tasmanian homes.