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The largest wind farm in the southern hemisphere has powered up for the first time today.
The massive project a few hours west of Brisbane will produce enough energy to supply 600,000 homes.
“To see it doing what it’s meant to be doing, exporting clean, renewable energy to the grid, is such an important achievement,” Acciona Energia director Andrew Tshaikiwsky said.
“They first came to us 12 years ago and we had the attitude of ‘we’ll believe it when we see it’,” landowner Jono Carson said.
That vision was brought to life with 162 turbines now scattered across the hills of the state’s granite belt region, each piece transported painstakingly from the port of Brisbane to the bush.
“As far as the turbines go it’s good use of this country because you can’t farm it but you still run sheep and you can still run goats,” Jane Carson said.
The farm covers an area of more than 3600 hectares, with landowners compensated for hosting turbines on their properties.
“Well that’s the best thing about it, it’s a guaranteed income, we’re not relying on the weather,” Carson said.
Each blade is 80 metres long and weighs more than 26 tonnes.
It took the team between two and three days to complete the installation of a single turbine.
From the top tip of the blades to the ground is almost 230 metres, allowing the turbines to be exposed to winds you can’t feel on the ground below.
Using those gusts the farm will produce 920 megawatts of power – enough energy to supply 600,000 homes.
It will effectively double the amount of renewable energy being generated by wind farms injected into the grid in Queensland.
The farm was developed by the Spanish company Acciona and the Queensland government’s renewable energy generator CleanCo.
It’s hoped the new wind farm could help push down power prices by as early as next year.
“This is an enormous milestone and we are looking forward to having more cheap and clean energy coming into the grid to put downward pressure on our power prices,” Labor MP Lance McCallum said.
