Turbines at newly installed Victoria wind farm pulled down to fix faulty parts

Spanish energy giant Acciona is pulling down turbines at its brand new Mortlake South wind farm in Victoria to fix faulty parts, just months after the project was commissioned. 

The parts being replaced are bearings in the nacelle because they aren’t performing to the standard the company needs, an Acciona spokesperson told RenewEconomy. He said that not all of the 35 Nordex turbines will need to be dismantled.

The wind energy giant, which is also building Australia’s first gigawatt-scale wind project at MacIntyre in Queensland, told residents in December that some parts of the turbines needed to be replaced and it would start the work over the Christmas holiday period. 

The 157.5 megawatt (MW) wind farm was commissioned in July last year, but has been producing energy at relatively low capacity factors, presumably to do with faults at the turbines.

“There will be minimal impact in terms of traffic or noise, but you can expect increased movement of large trucks from the Christmas period through to the end of January, and cranes being set up,” Acciona said in its update.

“Turbine parts, including blades, may be visible on the ground as turbines are dismantled.” 

In a letter to residents, Acciona said an initial seven turbines were affected and replacement parts wouldn’t arrive until the new year.

The turbines are supplied by Nordex, a German company of which Acciona owns 29.9 per cent, and whose turbines are also being used in the MacIntyre project.

Nordex has struggled to be profitable, as inflation has eaten into project margins and supply chain issues has led to a backlog of installations.

But unlike Seimens Gamesa, the company hasn’t had any notable systemic problems with equipment faults.

A Nordex tower collapsed in 2021 at a wind farm in North Rhine-Westphalia in Germany, which was found to be due to weaknesses in its concrete-steel hybrid tower, and in 2022 a turbine running at overspeed for more than four hours was the cause of a failure at the 25MW Pant-y-Wal wind farm in south Wales in 2022.

In 2022, Nordex replaced all six turbines at the Jüchen A44n wind farm in Germany after finding faults in the towers before the farm was commissioned.

Maintenance follows long delayed launch

The Mortlake South wind farm has been a long time coming, following delays caused by the Covid19 pandemic and obtaining grid connection approval. 

The project won planning approval in 2017 and was one of six winners of the Victorian government’s renewable energy auction in September of 2018.

Construction began in 2019 and the first turbine – at the time the second largest to be erected in Australia at 4.5 MW – was installed in 2020. 

The wind farm was supposed to be finished by 2021, but it faced long delays in being connected to the grid because of a lack of transmission capacity in that area. 

In December, network company AusNet said it started work on the Mortlake Turn-In Project to open up hosting capacity for 1,500 MW of new renewables.

Currently, there are two 500kV transmission lines which run past the Mortlake Terminal Station, but only one connects to the station. This Turn-In will upgrade the current layout and connect the second 500kV line.

AusNet says connecting both circuits at the Mortlake Terminal Station will allow a more balanced sharing of power between the two parallel circuits, making the network more stable.