Having spent the better part of my career involved in the machinery that keeps power systems running, I’ve watched Australia’s wind industry grow from a handful of demonstration projects into a fleet of roughly 13 gigawatts (GW) spread across the eastern and southern states.
That fleet now anchors the grid. In the first quarter of 2026, the National Electricity Market (NEM) hit a record 46.5 per cent renewable share, with wind generation up 9.5 per cent in Q1 2026 compared with the same time last year, according to the Australian Energy Market Operator (AEMO).
Despite these strong gains, we’re not building fast enough to replace coal plants heading for retirement. Just 2.3 GW of new renewable energy generation projects reached financial close in 2025, one of the lowest levels in a decade, but the system needs at least 6 GW of large-scale projects commissioned every year just to keep pace.
And while there are 67.3 GW of wind, solar and battery projects in the approvals pipeline, permitting timelines, grid connection queues and community engagement mean that there’s still a while yet before we can begin generation.
While we wait for the next wave of capacity to arrive, the question rarely asked is: How much more can we get out of existing infrastructure?
The wind fleet availability gap
From where I sit, existing infrastructure can yield more than we expect. A significant share of Australia’s wind fleet was built a decade or more ago. Many of those turbines are operating below expected capacity due to unavoidable downtime from generator failures, drivetrain faults, and delayed access to specialist repair. When a major component goes offline and the nearest overhaul facility is overseas, a turbine could stay dark for months.
Across 13 GW of installed capacity, that can add up. Every turbine sitting idle is a lost opportunity to generate clean power that doesn’t require new land, planning approval or transmission build. As the fleet ages, the stakes also get higher because the frequency of large component failures increase.
Even though most operators run solid maintenance programs, the real gap happens when something significant breaks. The commercial impact, therefore, really depends on how fast you recover.
The key here is to shorten recovery windows to lift output, stabilise revenue and strengthen power purchase agreement performance. This is where domestic repair and overhaul capability makes a material difference.
In my experience, the operators who recover fastest share a few things in common: they have local access to full generator overhauls and rewinds rather than shipping components to the other side of the world. And they invest in preventive programs to understand their failure patterns comprehensively, to fix root causes and not just the symptoms.
Offshore wind needs onshore foundations
What I’ve described becomes more consequential as Australia moves further towards offshore wind. Declared zones, including Gippsland in Victoria, the Hunter and Illawarra regions, and the Southern Ocean near Portland, are expected to progress later this decade.
The turbines going into these projects will be larger and more complex than the onshore fleet, but the fundamentals don’t change. Offshore performance will depend on the same elements that determine onshore outcomes: generator servicing quality, workshop-level rewind capability, and the speed at which mechanical and electrical faults can be diagnosed and repaired. The difference is that offshore access windows are tighter, while weather constraints are harsher, and the cost of extended downtime is significantly higher.
These capabilities cannot be created only when construction begins. Establishing domestic readiness early through workshop investment, specialist repair training and supply chain localisation will reduce outage duration and help prevent the early life reliability issues experienced by many first-generation offshore fleets overseas.
How uptime pays off and why this matters for 2030
Australia has committed to 82 per cent renewable energy by 2030. Meeting that target will take every lever available, whether it comes from new builds, storage, transmission or demand response.
Lifting the performance of the existing wind fleet is one of the levers that should be activated urgently. Stronger wind fleet performance also supports the federal Capacity Investment Scheme, which incentivises energy delivered to the grid rather than nameplate capacity.
It stabilises clean dispatch, reduces volatility in merchant revenue, and makes each installed turbine more productive and predictable, particularly as grid constraints tighten across several regions.
It also builds something less tangible but high-impact: a domestic capability base. With global logistics disruptions affecting operators, keeping advanced engineering in Australia also means retaining the skills and engineering expertise that the country will need at far greater scale as the 51 gigawatts development pipeline begins to convert into operating assets.
In a system under pressure to deliver clean power faster than approvals and construction cycles allow, uptime is one of the most immediate sources of value we have.
Chris Page is head of services Oceania at Sulzer
