Energy company AGL has installed the final turbine at Australia’s largest wind farm, the 453MW Coopers Gap project in Queensland.
The final blade on the last turbine was fitted on 24 April. Coopers Gap will be fully completed in the second half of this year.
Out of the wind farm’s 123 GE turbines 96 have been commissioned, equating to 182MW of capacity supplying electricity into the National Electricity Market.
AGL construction head Brian McEvoy said: “This is a significant milestone for everyone involved in the Coopers Gap wind farm project, including owner Powering Australian Renewables Fund.”
The fund is a financing initiative created by AGL and the Queensland Investment Corporation.
Construction began in early 2018, comprising the transportation of more than 1200 components over 300km from the Port of Brisbane, over a mountain range, to the Darling Downs site.
McEvoy added: “The scale of the achievement is underlined by the fact that each of the blades are more than 60 metres long, the nacelle housing the generating parts weighed 90 tonnes, and they were lifted more than 100 metres into the air hundreds of times to be fitted.
“About 200 people from the GE-Catcon consortium worked on site at the peak of construction work but this will wind down to about 20 once operations begin.”
“We could not have got to this point without the strong support from all of our key stakeholders including the Queensland Government, the Western Downs and South Burnett regional councils, local landowners, the Australian Energy Market Operator and Powerlink Queensland,” McEvoy added.