Big funding boost puts Southern Downs at centre of clean energy revolution
The Clean Energy Finance Corporation will help provide $160 million in concessional finance to the Southern Downs renewable energy zone.
Genex has signed an offtake deal with Energy Australia for its planned wind farm (file photo)
The funding would support crucial infrastructure to connect renewable energy projects to the national market.
It was the first financial support for a renewable energy zone which was created so that infrastructure funds were more efficiently used.
The CEFC said the funding would unlock an additional 500 megawatts of new network hosting capacity.
The Southern Downs REZ includes the Karara and MacIntyre projects, which would become one of the world’s biggest onshore wind farms.
The CEFC said the funding would enable Powerlink to “future proof” the REZ by developing it at scale.
Powerlink would build an operate the 65km of high voltage transmission line and two switching stations. Work has already started on the infrastructure.
Once completed the 180 turbines in the wind farms would generate power for 700,000 homes, but there would also be sufficient room on the network for future projects.
