Uungula Wind Farm – owned by Andrew Forrest’s CWP Renewables – has received the green light to develop a 400-megawatt wind farm about 14km east of Wellington in the Central West and Orana region of NSW.

With a project area of 8800 hectares and a development footprint of 637 hectares, the project involves the development of up to 97 turbines, with a maximum tip height of 250m and hub height of 166m, as well as a 150megawatt-hour battery energy storage facility.

In addition, the project requires the typical associated ancillary infrastructure required with wind farm projects, including concrete batching plants, permanent access tracks, on-site electrical infrastructure, wind monitoring masts and a new 330 kilovolt transmission line to connect to TransGrid’s transmission line.

Visual impacts are a key matter for consideration in warm farm developments.

The Department of Planning and Environment, as part of its assessment, was generally satisfied that the project would not fundamentally change the broader landscape characteristics of the area or result in any significant visual impacts on the surrounding non-associated residences, with the exception of one residence.

CWP has designed the project in such a way to avoid disturbance of native vegetation, including the micro-siting turbines to reduce impacts on biodiversity.

However, the project still involves clearing 483 hectares of modified grassland vegetation and 143 ha of native woodland.

CWP has agreed, via a voluntary planning agreement, to contribute up to $3,309 per annum per turbine, equating to $320k per annum (indexed by CPI annually).

In the Central West and Orana region, there are two operational, two under construction, two approved and three proposed State significant development energy projects within 50km of this project.