Spanish Acciona to build one of the world's largest wind farms in Australia

The Spanish company Acciona announced on Monday a new project to expand the electricity generation capacity of its MacIntyre wind power complex in northeastern Australia to 2,000 megawatts, which will make it one of the largest of its kind built on land in the world.

The doubling of the capacity of the MacIntyre wind complex, located some 150 kilometers southwest of the city of Brisbane (capital of the Australian region of Queensland), will be achieved with the construction of the neighboring Herries Range wind farm.

This new Herries Range wind project, which will have 180 turbines and a capacity of 1,000 megawatts, will cost 2,000 million Australian dollars (US$ 1,338 million or 1,292 million euros).

"Queensland will welcome one of the world's largest onshore wind projects after energy giant Acciona announced the development of its new A$2 billion (Australian) project," the head of this region's government, Annastacia Palaszczuk, said in a statement.

The future MacIntyre complex of more than 1,000 megawatts was initially composed of two wind farms, the 162-turbine MacIntyre, owned by Acciona Energy (70%) and Ark Energy (30%), and the 18-turbine Karara, owned by state-owned CelanCo.

With the development of the nearby Herries Range wind farm, "the MacIntyre complex would reach a capacity of 2 gigawatts (2,000 megawatts)," Acciona Energía managing director Brett Wickham said in a statement.

"This represents a total investment of more than 4,000 million Australian dollars (US$ 2,678 million or 2,584 million euros) and the supply of clean energy equivalent to 1.4 million homes per year," he added.

With this project, still under development, Australia aims to have one of the largest onshore wind farms in the world, after China's Jiuquan (also known as Gansu) wind farm complex, which will have 7,000 turbines and a capacity of 20,000 megawatts.

Source: EFE