QLD wind farm to be the biggest in Australia

TAYLA SUDALL

Final details have been confirmed for Australia’s biggest wind farm which will be built north of the Bunya Mountains.

The project, which was approved by the Queensland Government in March 2017, has been enlarged from 115 wind turbines to 123 wind turbines.

The wind farm is known as Coopers Creek Wind Farm. Construction of the wind farm will be completed in 2019.

Coopers Creek Wind Farm is owned by AGL, one of the biggest providers and generators of energy in Australia. The company runs Australia’s largest solar and wind farms.

The Coopers Creek Wind Farm will be built on land near Cooranga North, between Dalby and Kingaroy.

Last week, AGL announced an agreement had been finalised with General Electric, a global digital industrial company, to use GE wind turbine technology at Coopers Creek Wind Farm.

General Electric will be supplying two different sets of wind turbines for the wind farm. One set of 913.6 megawatt turbines with 137 meter rotors, and another set of 323.8 megawatt turbines with 130 meter rotors.

The project will be General Electric’s fifth wind energy plant in Australia.

The Coopers Creek Wind Farm is a joint venture between AGL Energy, General Electric and the Queensland Investment Corporation.

A report about the impact of wind farms on the environment and nearby Bunya Mountains National Park was produced for Queensland’s co-ordinator general.

The Coopers Gap Wind Farm evaluation report acknowledged that the wind farm is likely to be visible from the northern, elevated section of the Bunya Mountains National Park, but pointed out there are no formal walking tracks through that part of the park.

The report also states that because of the locations of the walking tracks and the direction in which the lookouts are facing around the National Park, the wind farm would not “fundamentally alter the reasons for which this national asset was designated”.

“The turbines are unlikely to be visible from the key walking tracks and associated lookouts within the northern part of the National Park that typically look westwards, and the lookouts in the southern part of the National Park also typically look westwards,” the Coopers Gap Wind Farm evaluation report said.

Around 200 jobs are expected to be created during the construction of the wind farm and about 20 ongoing jobs to maintain the wind farm.