By Jo Nova
Despite the government plans to cover the country in wind turbines, the wind industry fell in a very big hole in 2025
Things in Renewable-Land must be worse than they seem. Giles Parkinson at RenewEconomy has been reduced to celebrating that *one* sole wind plant in Australia (one!) finally got a green light to proceed. This was “a first for 2025”. Ouch. Which is another way of saying that the economics of wind turbines are so awful, no one else in Australia wanted to build one this year.
“The investment drought is breaking,” says CEO hails first Australia wind project to reach financial close in 2025
Giles Parkinson, RenewEconomy
Auaetralia’s year-long wind energy investment drought has finally been broken after Tilt Renewables gave the green light to the 108 megawatt (MW) Waddi wind project in Western Australia.
The Waddi wind farm, located in the state’s wheatbelt about 150 kms north of Perth, is the first wind project to reach financial close in 2025 in Australia, and will begin construction in 2026 and reach full operations in 2028.
“This will be the first wind farm to reach a Final Investment Decision in 2025 and shows that the investment drought for new projects in Australia is finally breaking,” said Tilt CEO Anthony Fowler.
“Wind projects have been held back by a combination of grid access, connection challenges, social licence, and rising costs, although the industry says these have now started to ease. “
Even though the Green-Labor Party won the Australian election in May, everything has gone wrong for wind farm developers. The drought in wind projects that started before the election has continued afterwards too. Even a compliant, delusionally-supportive government can’t change geography, or high pressure cells. What’s killing wind power was always going to kill it.
One big high pressure cell can stop the wind all over the country at once (Jun 2024)
Sooner or later, as intermittent energy dominated the grid, the value of more random generation would fall to nothing. We reached a point where all the good locations for wind plants were filled, so there were no nice windy spots near transmission lines left. Then the horrible farmers got organized to stop the big new high voltage lines going through, which meant new sites would be delayed by years, or never get connected at all.
Making it worse, the unstoppable rise of subsidized solar power ate the profits of every generator at lunchtime forcing the market into negative prices. Then the rise of subsidized batteries chewed through the bonuses that might have come in frequency control markets and the bonanza evening price spikes.
As if that wasn’t bad enough, and it was terrible — the diabolical uncertainty of marginal losses was ruining business plans — each year the AEMO applies a new marginal loss value on projects that are too far from the cities, or who have too many other generators around them. This reflects the electrical losses in long lines or congested wires. But it means effectively the generators lose income for 10, 20 or 30% of all the electricity they make, and if a competitor builds a wind plant next door, they both suffer higher marginal losses.
Thus and verily, new wind plant developers faced an impossible Gordian knot — they needed to be close to cities, but far away from other generators. They had to be near high voltage lines, but in a different climate region so it might be windy for them when it was calm for everyone else. Wind turbines needed to be near, but far, alone but together — It was never going to work.
Photo By Tedder – Own work, CC BY 3.0,
The current is still flowing when we can be so negative about such a positive event! 🙂
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Investment Drought and Wind Drought.
The two go together like two peas in a pod.
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Bob Dylans Blowing in the wind takes on a new meaning
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The answer is not Bowen and the wind…🎶
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The answer my friend, is (not) Bowen in the wind.
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The one thing that needs to be stopped is off-shore wind in Australia. To date, I don’t believe there is one off-shore wind plant either built or approved. Let’s keep it that way. How the whole environmental blob who once hugged trees and saved whales can let off-shore even be mentioned is beyond me. Being partisan we need to ban off-shore wind because those idiots in Victorian government ( Labor ) have off-shore wind pegged as their major electricity supply into the future. Doesn’t matter that we sit on over 500 years supply of brown coal or that new coal generation tech is available. It’s all about appeasing the Greens in the state upper house so that Labor can remain in power. It’s why our logging industry is now about to be shuttered and those small forest towns about to die. All for the green vote.
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We should ban all wind farms outright.
Mad Viktoria is still trying to get off-shore wind off the, errr, ground.
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Victoria is hurtling to utter bankruptcy to the tune of vibrating boring machines. It will be under administration long before the completed construction of the next wind farm.
“We are progressing the project with investment from CIP and Cbus Super.”
Cbus or ALP enterprises.
Financed by federal taxpayers, guaranteed by grid users, overseen by the Victorian Government. Profits to Danish financiers. What could go wrong?
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Industry (read Labor) Super Geoff……why an I not surprised
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It is highly likely, for a variety of reasons, that investment in wind projects will be unprofitable. Cbus needs to be very careful that its investment will make the best returns for its shareholders, usually Australian workers in construction. Do the directors do their due diligence or do they follow the directions from Bowen and Charmers? When renewables are rejected for reliable coal and gas the membership will be financially disadvantaged. Maybe Cbus should invest in coal.
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The Trustees of CBUS, which is an Industry Superannuation Fund, have a fiduciary duty to act in the best interests of the Beneficiaries – The Superannuation Fund Members.
Otherwise……………And it won’t be pleasant.
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The way I see it it isn’t so much the taxpayers they arr plundering, it is the workers’ savo
Ings.
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Many Ozymandius’ lie fallen on the ground,
A testament to Hubris, ’twas thought they were more firmly
Anchored on the land.
But wind and tempest breathed their worst and here the windmills lie
Their after-life much longer than their intermittent life – eons till
Ozymandius’ erodes to dust.
So brief a life wherein they did engage in action with the universe.
What are they now? A blot upon the landscape
And much worse.
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Another one of those wanky Victorian Labor government names, often associated with policy objectives- “Star of the south” Let’s hope this project turn into a black hole.
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There may be a hint of sanity in the CSIRO. In the recent GenCost report they’ve released, onshore wind production is only mentioned in their cost effective assessment- offshore is not a factor. Good news for the marine environment and sea creatures.
Their estimates on consistent wind powered energy and transmission lines are way off, but it’s a step in the right direction. Hopefully there will be more small victories such as this soon, chipping away at the foundations of the climate change hoax.
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When it comes to renewables, does isolated Western Australia really count? WA is not exactly representative of the east coast grid. Let the ‘Gropers enjoy their little sandpit. OTOH, were the east and west networks hooked up… Eskimo, meet refrigerator.
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Last thing WA wants would be to be hooked up to the eastern grid network. Currently the combination of a good domestic gas reservation policy and adequate supplies of reasonably cheap gas means that WA electricity prices are reasonable.
No idea of the total electricity produced in the state as the NWIS and other northern grids are isolated. But the SWIS grid regularly peaks at 5 GW in summer, averaging 4.2GW every summer day. So I’m guessing total WA power must exceed 7 GW.
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Wasn’t far wrong. Gas: 5670 MW, Coal: 1677 MW, Hydro: 30mW; Biomass: 6 MW. These add up to 7383 MW. Wind nameplate: 1012 MW; Large solar nameplate: 191 MW.
A lot of heavy industry up north, virtually all powered by local gas.
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And it’s interesting to note that WA consumes more energy than Victoria.
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While it’s windy this morning in Perth, yesterday morning zero wind, no home solar before sunrise, so gas and coal had to do all the heavy lifting, around 80%. Even the “big” battery couldn’t help much at around 8%. Looking at the AEMO WA site, Perth had around 48 hours of little or no wind. On these hot nights, the WA SWIS Grid has to supply around 45% of peak load throughout the night. And the regular hot, windless nights in summer men’s that Perth is very dependent on gas and coal power.
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Graeme4, i find the Openelectricy.org.au site more informative than the AEMO WEM info. As you say for the last 3 days 14th Dec 8am to 17th 8am, coal and gas doing the hard yards when it counts in the evening peak demand in the SWIS.
Open electricity shows 58.7% for Gas /coal, 37.1% for wind /solar and only 4.2% from Batteries, even though WA have some of the largest BESS capacity in the country, with the Kwinana 100 & 225 MW, Neoen’s Collie 341 & 219 MW systems and Synergy’s new 500MW (2x250MW)system, which is located directly across the road from their 340MW Collie A coal fired station.
Muja Coal has been offline with planned maintenance and a breakdown since 11.30pm 16th.
Lucky that we had the drop in temperature on Wednesday.
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Thanks for the link Gazz. Will look at that site. As you say, AEMO WA isn’t a great site to determine what’s going on.
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The one good thing about wind, solar and Big Battery plantations is that without subsidies or forced purchase arrangements the “industry” disappears instantly, I mean overnight. Subsidy-harvesting is after all, the one and only purpose of these failures.
My fantasy is that Australia will one day get a rational Government and remove the subsidy-harvesting incentives for these plantations that have caused such tremendous damage to Australia.
Ok, I can dream, OK?
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I’d be quite happy if some sensible government just announced that subsidies/ green certificates etc, would decrease over some short term time frame eg.5-10 years. The industry has now been subsidised for approximately 25 years, probably only fair to give them 10 years to readjust. That announcement alone would stop investment in its tracks.
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They should be given the minimum notice legally required.
They have already impoverished Australians for 25+ years.
They have harvested enough subsidies via forced purchase arrangements.
Maintaining subsidies for ten years, even reduced ones is way too long.
Australia doesn’t have that long to endure high electricity prices.
Businesses should NEVER invest in enterprises whose sole existence is based upon government favours or taxpayer subsidies and not free market forces. They are high risk. They have taken the rewards now let them suffer the consequences of their greed.
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Or just adjust the bid time for electricity suppliers. Presently, it’s in 5 minute blocks. Do a gradual increase over a similar time frame- so, maybe 1 hour -> 3 h -> 6 h -> 12h -> 24h. Suddenly, there would be investors in coal/gas ( nuclear?) beating down the door.
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How large was the GOVERNMENT/TAXPAYER subsidy to get this INVESTMENT passed. How much is the non supply of electricity ” when the wind dont blow”
going to cost the TAXPAYER. the scam continues.
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Apparently the going rate is $700,000 per turbine per year. What’s that? About 6 years for the payback and perhaps fourteen years of cream. Cutting subsidies altogether would just take the cream but it would discourage new investment.
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Strong high pressure blocking events in the mid latitudes is a global cooling signal.
The reason for this outrageous comment, most models agree that there should be fewer blocking events in a warmer climate. But that is not happening, massive fail.
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Sooner or later power stations on existing locations and using existing transmission lines will become the main focus and in desperation.
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Future turbines powered by wind,
In Australia as farms are thinned,
Down to one next year,
Which the green lobby fear,
Will see all other projects binned.
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Blackout Bowen and Jacinta (Dan in drag) Allen. Both of them their brains = net zero!
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I read a comment a few months ago posted by an engineer with experience in nuclear power generators and construction including in China that China has already converted two coal fired power stations to nuclear reactor technology but details were not provided.
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How do they do it Dennis? We have it on good authority, from Bowen no less, that nuclear power stations take forever to build and cost more than we can afford.
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The USA went the other way in converting Fort St Vrain from nuclear to gas
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Makes sense, so bs bowen and his mob will vetoe it. Will save so much on transmission lines, no?
Pat
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Conversion
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….. and then there’s curtailment.
Because of that ubiquitous middle of the day rooftop solar power total, they are curtailing the delivered power to the grids supplied by actual power plants.
(Curtailment – “Umm, hey mate, we need you to turn off the generated power you’re delivering to the grid for a few hours, okay?”)
However, the ONLY power plants having their power delivery curtailed are those two Renewables of choice, wind and solar.
Now, hey, you may not think all that much power is being curtailed.
Over the last 365 days (until Midnight last night) the curtailment of power delivery, just from the wind plants alone was 3,500GWH of generated power.
That works out to 1.6% of ALL the generated power consumed across the AEMO coverage area. (and see how 1.5% is a small number ….. well perhaps not too much at all, really, eh!)
That total curtailed power is enough to supply 920,000 homes.
It was also the equivalent of ….. SIX WEEKS of the TOTAL wind generation for the whole year.
Now, even using the OpenNEM’s, umm, artificially low cost of wind generation, (cost per MWH) that’s a loss of, umm, $230 MILLION dollars, just from the curtailed power.
Now, what wind plant developer in his right mind is thinking of opening a new wind plant if he knows that EVERY DAY, he’s going to get that call ….. “Umm, hey mate, we need you to turn off the generated power you’re delivering to the grid for a few hours, okay?”
Tony.
PostScript – Oh, and that’s just the wind plants. Solar plants are curtailed even more.
3,843GWH, 1.7% 0f all generated power, 990,000 homes supplied, 11 weeks lost power, a loss of $259 million dollars. (solar plant cost per MWH)
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Might be happening already. Where I am in western Victoria I can drive any point of the compass and pass a wind power plant within 20 minutes. Just lately I’ve observed immobile wind turbines on days with some wind,around midday. But I am unsure of the mechanics. I know they are braked in extremely high winds. My observation would indicate that maybe they are also braked for curtailment.
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If the wholesale price is less than MINUS $7/MW and the wind is not gale force, you can bet the turbine is braked to prevent power generation.
Victorian price was negative up 2pm. It is screaming up now and heading for $20,300/MWh later this evening. The lights could well go out tonight. If you do not have a battery, please turn off your air conditioners when the sun goes down.
If you have a battery, the grid would like to use some of the energy later tonight if you can help out!!
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?.?…but shurely the coal and gas plants are also being “ curtailed” ?…..just to allow the solar and wind plants to operate when sun and wind conditions are favourable.
I recall reading somewhere the total coal plant capacity utilisation was down to less than 60% ?
Which would suggest a lot of coal generation capacity is not being used.
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If only 30% of coal capacity in NSW is “curtailed”, that would be nearly 20,000 GWh lost ?
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There is a point I’m trying to make here.
I always dislike even mentioning it these days because the term is so badly misunderstood.
Base Load. (two words not an adjective but an actual physical thing)
It’s the lowest point power generation gets down to every day, and that’s at around 4AM. It’s the power required absolutely to keep the Country running, and that’s been around 18000MW average across the year. Someone tried to ‘flame’ me on one of the climate change friendly sites when I mentioned it was 18000MW, telling me in no uncertain terms that it was absolutely nowhere near that total, and that’s what set me off.
When I originally started collecting power generation data, it was to detail that low point, the Base Load. I collected the AEMO data for a little more than a year, and after that full year, the average Base Load came in at 18019MW.
Back then 95% of that 18000MW was made up from just 4 sources, and coal fired power was 85% of it, the other two being hydro and gas.
So these days it’s coal, Hydro Gas and wind, and if wind is low, then coal and gas make up the difference.
This same day in 2014 it was 18000MW.Today, it was 19000MW. The Peak on that day was 26000MW, and today, around 31000MW.
So at the middle hours these days, rooftop solar supplies (and this is hard to explain correctly) what is needed ‘inside’ each sub branch area, so now, the grid does not need to supply those areas nearly as much as it once did, so major industry and major commerce and some residential are what is being supplied from the grid.
That power needed is ….. ABSOLUTE. It just has to be there, so now, coal hydro and gas deliver that extra requirement to make up to the Base Load, which is around that 18000MW STILL, across the whole day.
So now, coal hydro and gas and what little not already curtailed of wind make up 12000MW of that 18000MW. Keep in mind here that the rest of that absolute Base Load of 18000MW is made up from rooftop solar …… which IS inside each sub branch area.
Now ….. see how difficult it is to understand, let alone try and explain.
Tony.
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Wind turbines are highly inefficient.
https://notrickszone.com/2025/12/17/the-wind-energy-paradox-why-more-wind-turbines-dont-always-mean-more-power/
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Good simple observations from a very qualified observer. Yet it is politicians who make the final decisions.
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Blocking high pressure are dark doldrums.
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But great fishing times
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Political science and economics … build more wind turbines and electricity becomes cheaper.
sarc.
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The problem in Australia is far worse. Solar power is ubiquitous across mainland Australia and any roof can be fitted with solar panels to power what is inside the building. Not as good in winter as summer in higher latitudes but still good enough over mainland Australia.
There is absolutely no point build more utility scale wind and solar farms. Their demand is in rapid decline.
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I note the significant point that Prof makes in the article about trying to provide battery storage to overcome dunkelflautes.
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And those turbines/propellers/wind mills need oil, which is a hydrocarbon, to lubricate the ball bearings which help the big rotor blades turn.
How ironic is that.
Green, green. hypocricy.
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I would like to see the details of AGL’s power purchase contract for this wind farm. It has term of 15 years. They must be hoping that people will stop installing solar panels on their roofs.
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Maybe the board of directors were not well informed when the capital expenditure approval was tabled and accepted?
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Is the board DEI?
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The first set of wind turbines installed in WA have already shut down after only 15 year’s operation. It wasn’t economical to replace them with more turbines.
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Salmon Beach ? … that shut down in 2002! after 15 years service..
But that actually was replaced by the 10 mile Lagoon wind farm which I suspect you are refering to .
That ran from 1993 before being decommissioned in 2022 , …( but had not been used for several years prior to that ?)
Wind farms are generally not “refurbished/repowered” since the technology will have changed significantly in the decades from when they were first planned and engineered.
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Yep, I lumped all the Esperance sites as one for brevity. Esperance was supposed to be a really suitable site for wind, but it doesn’t appear to have worked out that way. Perhaps their access to cheap gas has made the difference.
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I believe the Renewable Energy Target ends in Dec 2030. That may have something to do with it!
John
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It’s a concern that the Lib/Labs will extend it.
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Will the Coalition extend it though? I was at a National Party meeting recently and the feeling was that the remaining coal stations have enough capacity to power the grid if they were just left to perform as designed. The corollary was that the money saved from subsidies and new transmission lines would pay to build new plants to replace those retiring.
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Not sure how many noticed the govt rushed through the EPBC reform bill before the Senate committee had been allowed to consider the reforms.
The govt had to suspend standing orders to rush the bill through on the last sitting day this year in a deal with the Greens, before the senate committee had even had a chance to consider it.
Interestingly was the change to effectively exclude coal and petroleum projects from streamlined assessment pathways and cannot be classified as “national interest proposals”.
Just when the AEMO and CSIRO see the light, the Govt goes and makes it tougher! Left hand meet right hand!!! LOL
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