Works begin at state-owned, forest-based wind farm – starting with five firefighting water tanks

Just two months after Victoria’s State Electricity Commission swooped in to buy a stalled, shovel-ready wind farm proposed for construction in the coal centre of Gippsland, shovels have turned the first sod at the project.

Victoria’s department of energy, environment and climate action (DEECA) announced earlier this week that preliminary works are now underway at the SEC Delburn Wind Farm, to prepare the site for construction to begin next month.

The State Electricity Commission (SEC) acquired 100 per cent ownership of the 205 megawatt (MW) wind farm from Cubico Sustainable Investments on December 23, and is developing the project in partnership with its originator, Osmi Australia.

The roughly $650 million deal marked a series of firsts: Victoria’s first publicly owned utility-scale wind farm; the first wind farm – at that point in time – to reach financial close in Victoria in 12 months, and; the first wind farm in Australia to be built within a pine plantation.

DEECA said on Wednesday that preliminary works at Delburn in the Latrobe Valley began last week, including the installation of five 130,000 litre firefighting water tanks as part of the project’s extensive fire mitigation measures.

“A stringent fire risk management approach is in place to ensure the wind farm will not increase fire risk in the area, with the water tanks just one of many fire mitigation measures,” the department says.

“Other measures include built in fire detection and suppression systems in each of the 33 wind turbines and fire camera monitoring to provide swift fire location detection.”

Next month, says DEECA, the SEC and its delivery partners will host project construction information sessions in the region for local community members and Gippsland-based businesses to learn more about the construction activities and associated supplier opportunities.

The original proposal for Delburn was for a 300 MW wind farm with 53 turbines at a height of 250 metres, and spanning three separate council areas. Turbine numbers were then revised down several times, landing on 33 with a capacity of 180-200 MW in 2020.

A big battery proposal for the site was rejected, on the grounds of the potential for it to be a fire risk. A late-2022 Supreme Court challenge to the wind farm’s state planning approvals claimed the wind farm was in a bushfire prone area and too close to local homes.

The Supreme Court challenge against Delburn was quashed in early 2023, however, allowing the project to prepare for construction, which Osmi had hoped to begin in 2024.

For its new owner, Delburn marks the third acqusition for the reboot of the government-owned utility, alongside the 600 MW/1.6 gigawatt-hour (GWh) Melbourne Renewable Energy Hub, now in operation, and the formerly stalled and under-construction Renewable Energy Park Horsham, with 119 MW of solar and a 100 MW, two-hour battery.

In comments this week, SEC CEO Chris Miller described the Delburn wind farm as an important project for the state that will play a critical role in bolstering its electricity network as more coal generators leave the grid.

“We’re looking forward to engaging with the Gippsland community on the many exciting work and supplier opportunities that the project will offer,” Miller said.

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