Towers for Australia’s biggest wind turbines arrive in north Queensland port

The first deliveries of jumbo-sized wind turbine components that will make up the 157MW Kaban wind farm being built in north Queensland have begun arriving at the Port of Cairns.

The massive Vestas turbine parts will make up 28 V162 turbines, which at 5.6MW will be the biggest in Australia to date by capacity, and height, and trump GE’s 5.3MW turbines installed at the Bango wind farm in New South Wales.

The huge metal tubes were snapped arriving at the North Queensland port by CleanCo, the Queensland state government-owned gen-tailer that is contracted to buy the output of the Kaban wind farm.

They were also captured by Ports North, here, arriving on a ship at nighttime around a week ago. There turbines will have a “tip” height of 225 metres.

The Kaban wind farm, being built by Neoen, will serve as one of the foundation projects for a new renewable energy zone being established in Northern Queensland.

The project locked in $370 million of finance in September from a syndicate of five lenders that included BNP Paribas, HSBC, MUFG, NAB and NORD/LB, after having been denied a government loan by federal resources minister Keith Pitt.

Constructed near Ravenshoe in the Atherton Tablelands, the wind farm component of the renewables hub will produce more than 450GWh of electricity each year – enough to power the equivalent of more than 100,000 Queensland homes.