Australia’s largest wind turbines rising over plains of Hughenden

THE biggest wind turbines yet installed in Australia are rising on the ridge line outside of Townsville.

AUSTRALIA’s biggest wind turbines are rising on the ridge line outside Hughenden west of Townsville.

Contractors Vestas completed the first tower last Thursday and are now hoping for a break in the wind to get the second turbine up over the next few days.

“They are working hard to get the turbines up,” Kennedy Energy Park director Rob Fisher said.

“One of the challenges we have is these projects are always in a windy place.”

The other challenge is the sheer size of the assembled components which include five tower sections standing a total of 136m high and 67m long blades to be fitted to the turbine cell and hub. Mr Fisher said they had imported the biggest mobile crane operating in Australia from Belgium into Townsville port and assembled it on site just outside Hughenden.

The 780-tonne capacity crane has a boom that reaches 180m.

“We are using it to 150m,” Mr Fisher said.

An aerial shot of the first 200m high wind turbine erected at the Kennedy Energy Park project near Hughenden.

Each turbine requires 600 cubic metres of concrete footing, which is equivalent to about a quarter of an Olympic swimming pool.

Mr Fisher said the towers were the same height “as the blinking lights” atop the Sydney Harbour Bridge.

In an Australian first, the $160 million hybrid project will comprise 12 200m-high wind turbines, a solar farm of 55,000 panels and a 4MWh lithium-ion Tesla battery providing energy storage.

The project is being developed by Canberra-based Windlab Ltd and Japan’s Eurus Energy Holdings Corporation, with Vestas providing the wind turbines and control software and Quanta Solar and Vestas responsible for the engineering, procurement and construction.

Mr Fisher said about 130 people were working on site but that was expected to grow to 160 or 170 over the next week or so when solar farm construction is ramped up.

“We installed our first solar panel (yesterday), 54,999 to go,” Mr Fisher said. He said they were “largely on track” or at least not so much behind that it would affect the project in any way.

They expected full operation from the turbines in about next February with testing and commissioning to occur during the lead up.

A second stage of the project potentially would inject further investment of $2 billion into an expanded wind farm operation on another site about 70km north of Hughenden.

Originally published as Australia’s largest wind turbines rising over plains of Hughenden