Telstra underwrites Australia’s biggest wind farm in PPA with Ark Energy

Telstra has signed a power purchase agreement with Korea Zinc subsidiary Ark Energy to source 350GWh a year  from what will be Australia’s largest wind farm, the massive McIntyre project in Queensland.

Ark Energy says the PPA will supply enough power to meet about 25 per cent of the telco’s energy needs from its 30 per cent share of the nearly 1GW wind farm. Telstra is Ark Energy’s first PPA partner, while for Telstra the deal marks its fourth since 2017.

The 923.4 MW MacIntyre Wind Farm is in south-east Queensland and set to be the largest wind farm in Australia when it’s commissioned in 2025, and part of the larger 1026MW Macintyre precinct — the first gigawatt-sized renewable energy project in Australia and one of the biggest in the world.

Telstra is one of the biggest power users in Australia.

“Agreements like this one will help insulate Telstra from fluctuating wholesale electricity prices,” said Telstra’s Kim Krogh Andersen in a statement on Tuesday.

“Our annual power bill is equivalent to 300,000 household power bills, so signing long-term renewable energy agreements helps us to manage our costs.”

Telstra and Ark Energy both declined to say what price it is paying under the PPA. RenewEconomy has reached out to both companies for comment.

Telstra closes in on renewables goal

Telstra began signing PPAs in 2017 when it bought all of the 670MW supply from the Emerald Solar Farm, built by RES Australia.

Later that year it led a consortium to buy all of the output from the 226 MW first stage of the Murra Wurra Wind Farm near Horsham in western Victoria, for the low price of $55/MWh.

And in 2021 the telco signed a deal to buy 80 per cent of the generation from the 58 MW Crookwell 3 wind farm, west of Goulburn in NSW.

At the time, CEO Andy Penn said in a blog that those three projects alone would take the telco more than halfway to its goal of 100 per cent renewables by 2025.

The four PPAs total about 970GWh annually.

Telstra has a goal to enabling renewable energy equivalent to all of its consumption by 2025 and the latest deal gets it to about two-thirds towards that goal. A spokesman says they’re hoping to sign at least another “couple” of PPAs before 2025.

Clean power investment spree

ACCIONA Energía’s MacIntyre Wind Project will also power the Sun Metals zinc smelter in Townsville, the state’s second largest energy user, and a further 400MW of capacity is contracted to Queensland’s government-owned power company CleanCo. Ark Energy and Sun Metals are both subsidiaries of Korea Zinc.

“I founded Ark Energy to decarbonise the Korea Zinc Group starting with Sun Metals, however as we have grown our renewable energy portfolio, so has our ambition to accelerate the energy transition more broadly by supporting other similar commercial and industrial scale businesses decarbonise their energy supply,” said Ark Energy chairman Yun Choi.

The first of 180 concrete foundations were poured for the massive 5.7MW turbines in September (see image above). The Nordex Delta 4000-N163/5.7 turbines require nearly 2,000 tonnes of concrete to hold a hub height of 148 metres.

Ark Energy is making significant investments into Queensland renewables.

The proposed Collinsville wind and solar project south-west of Bowen has potential capacity of 3GW of electricity and 1 million tonnes of green ammonia a year, while the SunHQ Hydrogen Hub in Townsville plans to produce green hydrogen from a behind-the-meter connection to the co-located 124MW Sun Metals solar farm.

In May, Ark Energy bought Epuron Holdings and its 9GW pipeline of solar and wind projects to support its expansion in renewable energy and green hydrogen production.