14 September 2021

New Crookwell wind farm to inject funds into local community

| Clare McCabe
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Crookwell 2 Wind Farm

The new Crookwell 3 Wind Farm will be adjacent to the site of the existing Crookwell 2 Wind Farm. Photo: Ken McCallum.

Site work is anticipated to begin this month at the 16-turbine Crookwell 3 Wind Farm, with commissioning expected to commence by late 2022.

Australian-owned company Decmil has been awarded the civil balance of plant works by developer Global Power Generation (GPG), a subsidiary of Naturgy.

Decmil has already begun geotechnical investigations and, withstanding any COVID-19 related disruptions, civil construction should commence soon.

The contract is worth $21 million, with options worth a further $2 million, according to a media statement by Decmil.

The total investment for the Crookwell 3 Wind Farm is around $120 million, and local contractors are also bidding for a share of construction works.

Civil site works will include 16km of road construction, including new access roads and improvements to existing access roads, 116,000 cubic metres of bulk earthworks for hardstands, laydowns and building pads, and 6600 cubic metres of concrete in tower bases.

Construction completion is expected by mid-2022.

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Decmil will return to the site to complete grouting after the turbine installation in late-2022.

Upper Lachlan Shire Small Business Association vice-president Susan Reynolds said the large-scale project will benefit many businesses in the Crookwell region.

“Infrastructure projects of this size will inject much appreciated revenue into our town through accommodation, food, petrol, bakery and services,” she said.

“It is hoped some of our Upper Lachlan Shire small business trades and operators will be extended the opportunity to contribute and realise revenue from the build and ongoing maintenance.

“This industrial build should assist many local businesses during these challenging times.”

Andrew Divall, from Divall’s Earthmoving and Bulk Haulage, said the project is expected to be a similar size to the Crookwell 2 Wind Farm.

His submission in support of the wind farm showed the company employed around 30 workers during the 18-month construction of Crookwell 2.

“Jobs of this scale are not commonplace and they provide a material number of jobs that pump money around businesses throughout the Crookwell and Goulburn economy,” said Mr Divall.

Divall’s Earthmoving and Bulk Haulage has tendered for civil works.

GPG has also partnered with wind turbine company Vestas to deliver the turbines and undertake a 15-year service agreement.

“We look forward to championing GPG’s ambitious vision of sustainability in Australia through the successful delivery of the Crookwell 3 Wind Farm,” said head of Vestas Australia and New Zealand, Peter Cowling.

Vestas’ turbines are also installed at the Crookwell 1 Wind Farm. The wind power company provided eight wind turbines at the 4.8 megawatt (MW) wind farm, the first to be established in NSW, in 1998.

The investment for Crookwell 3 is around $120 million and is designed to generate 58 MW of renewable energy.

In June 2021, a media statement from Naturgy said it had signed a power purchase agreement with Telstra.

The telecommunications giant has committed to procure 80 per cent of the energy generated at the wind farm at a fixed price.

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“The Crookwell project is an important part of Telstra’s renewable energy generation journey,” said Telstra chief executive officer Andrew Penn in a media statement.

“As one of the biggest energy users in the nation, it matters when we take action to both decarbonise our operations and clean up the grid for the future.”

Telstra aims to own or contract renewable energy generation equivalent to 100 per cent of the energy the company consumes in its operations by 2025.

GPG currently operates the adjacent 91 MW Crookwell 2 Wind Farm, with a power purchase agreement (PPA) awarded to the ACT Government. In total, Spain-based Naturgy has a portfolio of 750 MW of renewable energy projects across Australia.

The scaled-down Crookwell 3 Wind Farm was initially rejected by the NSW Department of Planning, Industry and Environment in October 2019, however the proponent won its appeal to the department a year later.

Crookwell 3 is expected to be fully operational by early 2023.

This will be the ninth wind farm in the Upper Lachlan Shire, contributing approximately 780 MW of renewable energy.

Original Article published by Clare McCabe on About Regional.

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Capital Retro4:59 pm 17 Sep 21

You should forget the sights and keep you eyes on the road, Sue Thurley.

Ellen Duggan4:25 pm 16 Sep 21

My only comment is that I live at Crookwell and I find them an eyesore….The landscape is ruined and I know they don’t work when it snows, rains and rarely on an overcast day. Decommissioned after about twenty years, base stays in ground and most of the parts come from China where they are made using coal.

Capital Retro8:29 pm 16 Sep 21

Your comment is well founded because in the USA limitations of land use for these abominations is now being exceeded (see video in link).

Meanwhile, in Europe the wind has stop blowing and coal is coming to the rescue.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/energy-prices-in-europe-hit-records-after-wind-stops-blowing-11631528258

That picture could be a movie poster of War of the Worlds

Capital Retro7:06 am 16 Sep 21

Wind farms certainly look like the ones in War of The Worlds when they clap out after about 20 years and are abandoned with their base plugs of carbonised concrete still in the ground.

Not to worry, those beautiful coal/uranium mines don’t leave a scerrick of damage to the landscape do they?

And do tell, what damage precisely will the concrete left in the ground do exactly?

Capital Retro10:06 am 17 Sep 21

There are no coal/uranium mines in our region where the bird blenders are JS, so your analogy is simply nonsense.

The environmental damage in creating the concrete plug is already enormous and as I understand it, it is a condition of approval of these wind “farms” that it be removed at the end of life of the turbine that sits on it. The carbon footprint created in removing them will also be enormous.

By the way, open cut coal miners have to lodge a bond to cover the costs of land rehabilitation when extraction is finished.

Capital Retro8:37 am 15 Sep 21

“Civil site works will include 16km of road construction, including new access roads and improvements to existing access roads, 116,000 cubic metres of bulk earthworks for hardstands, laydowns and building pads, and 6600 cubic metres of concrete in tower bases.”

Oh, how green is my valley.

So are your saying CR that no other source of power needs any enabling works? You can just pop up a power station without earthworks, without access roads etc?

JS9,
Capital thinks that coal power stations spring up naturally overnight and that all of their fuel magically appears at the front gate with no negative environmental consequences.

Oh and when it burns *poof* it disappears with no impact.

Capital Retro7:03 am 16 Sep 21

No, I am not saying that at all, JS9, I’m simply pointing out the blind acceptance people like you and chewy14 have when you embrace anything that is called renewable while at the same time ignoring the huge carbon footprint wind farms and their infrastructure create and the massive taxpayer-funded subsidies they receive.

Coal powered electricity generation has never claimed to be “clean and green” and I am not aware of any negative environmental consequences associated with coal mining these days. As usual, you have left out the details.

And of course, there are no subsidies extended to the coal powered energy sector..

Fire up Google Maps and enter “Loy Yang”.
Switch on Satellite View and zoom in so you can see the size of that hole in the ground.
Compare it in size to the nearby city of Traralgon (around 30,000 people)
Move the view around a bit until you find the nearby Morwell and Yallourn open cuts.

For those who complain about the wind turbines, try reversing the situation.

If we already had wind turbines and there was a proposal to construct facilities like those open cut coal mines, would you be happy to accept them, or would you be posting about the evils of brown coal open cut mines?

Capital Retro,
It’s hilarious that you think I have blind acceptance of anything.

I’m the one who produces reams of evidence showing that renewable energy sources are now cheaper and far cleaner than coal sources yet you blindly ignore any impacts from coal and refuse to accept the irrefutable evidence that the transition to renewables is ready well underway simply because they’re superior.

If you want to bury your head in the coal mine, go ahead. But don’t try to spin the deliberate ignorance into a virtue.

Capital Retro8:49 am 16 Sep 21

Did you miss my reference to “these days”?

Those holes in the ground which can only be seen from above will eventually become landfill and bioreactors for Melbourne’s garbage like the hole at Tarago is for garbage from Sydney.

Would you prefer this type of visual pollution? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mBsuN0uFfc8

Capital Retro10:18 am 16 Sep 21

“reams of evidence”?

You left the “d” off the first word.

Follow my instructions and look around that area. Take a look at old Yallourn open cut. Surely you can’t look at that and claim it has been successfully rehabilitated.

And any dreams of using what remains of it for any sort of rubbish landfill will be a disaster due to the very close proximity of two rivers.

Remember several years ago there was a fire in one of the open cuts there. It proved difficult to extinguish, taking about a month and a half and around 7,000 fire fighters. The area had some of the worst pollution in the world. Children, the elderly and pregnant women were advised to temporarily move away. iirc that cost around $100 Million to extinguish and fix the damage.

But I suppose some people seem to prefer that sort of world, after all it isn’t them or their loved ones living close to such places. The Latrobe valley is a long way away, out of sight to most people, and largely a forgotten part of Australia.

Capital Retro1:50 pm 16 Sep 21

“Follow my instructions and look around that area.”

No.

“No”

Wouldn’t want to see anything that affects your confirmation bias now, would you.

Capital Retro3:12 pm 16 Sep 21

“Confirmation bias” has nothing to do with it. I just don’t like people ordering me around.

Hahahaah no subsidies for the coal powered energy industry….. keep telling yourself that CR.

Doesn’t make it true.

And if you think every massive hole from coal mining is going to be magically filled up, then you’ve got another thing coming.

But I suspect you really don’t care – it’ll be someone else’s problem hey? Stuff leaving a better world for future generations, if one can ream destruction on it instead.

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