Hamburg, 12 January 2017. Uptrend Down Under: End of 2016 the Nordex Group has signed a contract for supplying 22 AW125/3000 turbines for the construction of the first phase of “Mount Gellibrand” wind farm in Australia. This 66 MW project is located near Colac, in Western Victoria state, in the south-east of the country. The customer is the Spanish project developer Acciona Energia. This is the first Australian project for the Nordex Group since the acquisition of the Spanish wind turbine manufacturer Acciona Windpower in April 2016. At the moment there are two wind farms with the AW1500 platform in operation in Australia, with a total of 238.5 MW. This new contract has already been included in the 2016 order intake of EUR 3.3 billion Euro reported by the Nordex Group yesterday.
Victoria is one of the states with the greatest potential for wind power in Australia. At the “Mount Gellibrand” site, some 100 kilometres south-west of Melbourne, there are average annual wind speeds of 7.2 m/s. The turbines are especially designed for sites like this with medium wind speeds (IEC 2b) and a low turbulence level. Nordex will be installing the AW125/3000 turbines on 87.5 metre tubular steel towers, which will be built in Victoria. Start-up of the wind farm is scheduled for 2018, after which Nordex will service the turbines for an initial period of two years.
