Gunning Wind Farm Tour

The ANU Climate Change and ANU Change Institutes (which I am a member of), are hosting a tour of the Acciona Wind Farm at Gunning, NSW on 11 February 2013.

The Gunning Wind Farm in New South Wales consists of 31 wind turbines built on the Cullerin Range, approximately 15 kilometres north-east of Gunning in the Upper Lachlan Shire.

The turbines are located on the privately owned property Walwa, which is predominantly cleared pastoral land. The wind farm site continues to be used for grazing.

Project Snapshot

• Location: approximately 15 kilometres north-east of Gunning and 70 kilometres north-east of Canberra.
• Capacity: 46.5MW (31 wind turbine generators).
• Completion Date: May 2011.
• Energy Production: Gunning Wind Farm can power 23,250 homes annually.
• Job creation: 100 manufacturing and installation jobs were created during the construction phase. There are will be nine operations and maintenance staff overseeing the operation of the wind farm
• Project Value: A$147m.

The Gunning Wind Farm has an electrical substation, access tracks to each turbine, an operation and maintenance facility and 17.4km of underground cabling. A 14km 132kV transmission line was also constructed to connect the wind farm to the existing Yass-Goulburn transmission line.
Prior to development of the site ACCIONA Energy and independent consultants identified how best to utilise the wind farm site and identified constraints. Areas of study included flora and fauna, cultural heritage, sound, visual aspects and vehicle access.
The turbines at Gunning
The Gunning Wind Farm steel towers are 80m high with a base diameter of 4.5m and top diameter of 2.5m. Each tower base is anchored into position by approximately 250m³ of reinforced concrete. The nacelle and hub have a combined weight of approximately 65 tonnes, and together are 12.5m long and 4m high. The fibreglass blades are up to 40m long and weigh up to six tonnes each.
Transmission line
A new 132kV transmission line has been constructed to connect the wind farm to the existing 132kV Yass-Goulburn transmission line. Electricity is generated from turbines at 12kV and is then stepped up at a substation to 132kV to match the existing Yass-Goulburn voltage before connection can be made to the grid. ...

From: Gunning Wind Farm, ACCIONA, 2012