MacIntyre Wind Farm: Inside look at $2bn renewable energy project being built on the Southern Downs

It’s one of the biggest worksites in the world, where you can drive for 100km and still only reach its halfway point. Take a sneak peek inside the largest wind farm in the southern hemisphere, being built right on Queensland’s doorstep.

One of the largest wind farm projects in not just Australia but the Southern Hemisphere, is under construction and promises to be the future of renewable energy right here in our own back yard.

It’s hard to imagine the sheer scale of the MacIntyre Wind Farm, which is under construction in Queensland’s Southern Downs region, until you’ve driven through the project for 40 minutes and still haven’t reached the halfway point of the site.

It’s as daunting as it is impressive, making it Acciona Energia’s biggest renewable energy facility as well as one of the largest onshore wind farms in the world.

The $2bn project is expected to power shy of a million homes – sooner than you’d think.

Spanning across 36,000ha, initial civic works are now 70 per cent complete, including more than 220km of internal site roads.

Situated on lush green hills and carved through sheep grazing land, the wind farm is estimated to have the capacity to power 700,000 homes upon completion.

All 162 turbines are expected to be online by 2025.

Since works began in 2022 Acciona Energia estimate a staggering 3 million work hours have been completed on site, with the capacity to construct three turbines per week.

How does a wind turbine work?

Warwick Daily News was invited to attend a tour of the project. To put it into perspective, the sheer size of the road network within the wind farm would equal travelling the distance from the wind farm to Brisbane.

A frequently asked question the team at Acciona receive during these tours is – why aren’t the turbines spinning when it’s windy?

It’s a question most of us in the vicinity of a wind farm have likely asked ourselves, and the answer is quite simple.

The turbine hosts a built in weather system that can detect the direction and speed of the wind, and as a safety feature prevents the rotor from spinning during high winds.

Don’t let the turbines’ staunch appearance fool you – the rotor also has the ability to rotate a full 360 degrees to allow it to capture wind flow from multiple directions.

The expansive $2B MacIntyre Wind Farm Precinct is vast and impressive (Photo: NRM)

From the base of the turbine up to the rotors is a staggering 148m, with the powerful rotors reaching a diameter of 163m.

Given their sheer magnitude it’s hard to imagine how they might be transported to site.

For anyone travelling the Ipswich Motorway during odd hours of the morning or night, might have been lucky enough to witness the power needed to transport just one blade out to site.

It’s been a significant challenge for the MacIntyre Project, which has led Acciona Energia to create a world first technology which can adapt to the everchanging roads.

MacIntyre Wind Farm director of engineering and construction Andrew Tshaikiwsky said the project was expected to generate electricity and be sending it back through the grid in early 2024.

Mr Tshaikiwsky said the project had faced its fair share of challenges, seeing a slight setback in the operational time frame due to initial delivery disruptions during Covid-19 restrictions.

“We had some challenges with material supply and logistics because of what happened during the Covid period,” he said.

“We have managed to recover some of those initial delays, but there will be some things that do hold us back and particularly just having our substations ready to energise, which will be a couple of months later than we would have liked.

“(But) we’re certainly going to get there and certainly committed the project will finish off really strong.”

The expansive $2B MacIntyre Wind Farm Precinct is vast and impressive (Photo: NRM)

In 2023 Acciona Energia will have completed more than 70 community tours of the project, giving those curious and full of questions an opportunity to see the project up close and watch as it slowly spins to life.

“We’ve already started doing our community consultation, simply because we think it’s important for the community to know and get them involved as well,” MacIntyre Wind Farm Project’s community and stakeholder engagement lead Maria Baker said.

“Our design isn’t fully constructed yet because there’s a lot of approvals that we’re going through at the moment.

“The plan for next year is going to be that we’re going to be holding workshops for local businesses on how to tender for our projects.”

MacIntyre Wind Farm Precinct map (Photo: ACCIONA Energía)

Giving back to the community

As part of Acciona Energia’s community sponsorship program, more than $100,000 was distributed to 30 of the region’s community groups in 2023 alone.

Included in this year’s group of recipients was Granite Belt Wildlife Carers Inc which received $3000 to build a macropod enclosure to assist with the rescue of wallabies and kangaroos.

Granite Belt Wildlife Carers president Betty Balch said the enclosure is still in the process of being fully completed, but has been an asset to the group in keeping rescued wildlife safe.

During the recent catastrophic bushfires that tore through the Southern Downs and Granite Belt, the MacIntyre team were quick to lend a hand in assisting fire crews to put in fire breaks and supplied both Southern and Western Downs emergency service crews with food and water.

With fires burning in such a close vicinity, crews at MacIntyre were forced to evacuate the site for three days and saw 700 workers evacuated in under three hours.

Future renewable energy projects

Next in the line of future Acciona projects in the Southern Downs and Goondiwindi region’s is Herries Range Wind Farm, which begins construction in 2025.

The Herries Range project is understood to hold the capacity to power a further 700,000 homes.

The combined MacIntyre and Herries Range precinct’s could endeavour to power over 1 million residences, and if all goes to plan would generate a total of 2GW of electricity.

Located northwest of MacIntyre at Gore, the Herries Range project will generate up to 600 jobs during peak construction and add another 160 turbines to the precinct.

The Herries Range Wind Farm is expected to be complete by 2027/28.

For anyone interested in participating in one of the community engagement sessions, or how to put in a tender head to the MacIntyre Wind Farm website.