News

Fortescue subsidiary Pilbara Energy (Generation) Pty Ltd is seeking approval for its Bonney Downs Wind Farm at Nullagine, in WA’s Pilbara region, from the state government’s Environmental Protection Agency.

The WA EPA approval application comes around four months after an EPBC Act referral was submitted to the federal DCCEEW for the same project, to be located 9km south-west of Nullagine adjacent to Fortescue’s Christmas Creek Iron Ore Mine Expansion project.

In the interim, between the recent state and earlier federal environmental approval requests, a number of strange activities have occurred.

First, in mid-December, the project was pulled from the federal environmental approval process.

Then in January, Fortescue started construction of its smaller Nullagine Wind Project of up to 17 turbines for a total capacity of 133 MW in the same vicinity as the Bonney Downs Wind Farm site.

In its referral to the WA EPA, Fortescue stressed this was a separate project – calling it the Nullagine Pilot Wind Farm – and “not a staged ‘first phase’ or component of the Bonney Downs Wind Farm and is excluded from the Bonney Downs referral and associated Development Envelope”.

In the later state referral for Bonney Downs, Fortescue has halved the number of proposed turbines from up to 200 to up to 100 but retained the total capacity of up to 2100 MW. Doing the maths, this would entail giant WTGs of 20 MW each.

However Fortescue does qualify the total capacity figure by saying, “the actual power generation of the Proposal may differ to the target capacity, depending on the efficiency of the turbine equipment once installed and throughout the life of the Proposal”.

The Bonney Downs referral says self-erecting Nabrawind turbines may be used at the project, as they are at the Pilot wind farm, so maybe Nabrawind is developing a new super-turbine of 20 MW.