WA’s Wheatbelt becoming a wind farm belt – part 2
Published Date : 2025-February-25, Tuesday
New big wind farm
projects planned in southern WA reminded us of our headline from July last year,
“WA’s Wheatbelt becoming a wind farm belt”, although Vestas’s planned Warperup
Creek Wind Farm project might be stretching the Wheatbelt to include part of
the Great Southern Region.
Warperup Creek Wind Farm is proposed as an up to 75-turbine, 500 MW project in stage 1, with potential in the long-term to expand to 10-times that size to produce green hydrogen.
The project is expected to generate an estimated $700 million investment in renewable infrastructure and create of 400 construction and 15 permanent operational jobs.
Technical studies to assist the planning and approvals process have started, and in September last year council approved the installation of a wind monitoring mast 13km north of Ongerup townsite.
Vestas has also started investigations for a wind farm project near Bowelling, around 30km south-east of Collie in the Shire of West Arthur.
A short distance north, around 40km north-east of Collie in the Shire of Williams, RES Australia is proposing the massive 1209.6 MW Dardadine Wind Farm.
Although at an early stage of planning the project could include up to 168 wind turbines over approximately 19,000 hectares of rural land predominantly used for grazing and conservation, with less than 3% of the total land area affected.
A battery energy storage system is also proposed for the project, which is 40km north-east of state-owned, coal-fired Muja and Collie Power Stations, the largest power stations in the South West Interconnected System.
WA-based Lacour Energy is also undertaking feasibility studies for potential wind farm developments in the Wheatbelt region, in the Shires of West Arthur and Wagin.
While potential wind farm developments of up to approximately 1000 MW capacity are possible, most likely in stages, no specific sites have been named at this stage.
Across all of WA our database is tracking 22 in development projects, including 17 in the pre-approved phase representing 12.62 GW of new generation.