An information meeting was held on Wednesday afternoon at the Winiam Hall by the developers of the Kiata Wind Farm to keep locals informed as to the progress of the project.

This was the first in what will be a series of such meetings held about every two months throughout this year to keep the community up to date with what is happening.

Construction Manager Martin Vries, from project development company Windlab, addressed the gathering of 25 people and outlined the various stages of the project that will see area south of Salisbury transformed into a wind farm with nine turbines.

Other speakers included representatives of the various companies that are responsible for the difference aspects of the project.

Above - Construction Manager Martin Vries (right), and Site Manager Chris Odendaal (left) discussing details of the project with local landholder Greg Albrecht.

To date most of the work that has been done has been behind the scenes in planning and design, with very little physical work on site. The only evidence at the location currently is a monitoring mast which holds instruments to record the wind and weather conditions, but this will all change within the next month once the permits are all in place.


Above - The monitoring mast is the first structure to be built on the site south west of Kiata.

Work has commenced on the upgrade of the public roads that will be used to access the site, which includes the heavy vehicle access route from the Western Highway on the eastern outskirts of Nhill, south along the Winiam East Road and east on Janetzkis Road to the site.

A total of nine turbines will be constructed in stage one of the project, with a further four in a theoretical stage two.

The towers will each be 117 metres high and the turbine blades will add another 61 giving a total structure height of near 180 metres tall. These will be painted in an off white colour with a matt finish to reduce their visual impact and reflections.

Both the man-made and natural environments were strongly considered during the planning, with the location of each individual tower and the on farm vehicle access tracks chosen to reduce the impact on the local residents and the birds and other wildlife that live in the area.

The electricity generated from this wind farm will be fed into the local Powercor grid and consumed locally in our region.

Work is planned to start on site in late February with site preparation works followed by the construction of the power substation.

The formations for the towers will be put down between April and July, and late July will see the arrival of the large cranes that will be used to build the towers and raise the nacelles and turbine blades.

The most obvious construction will take place during August and September when the turbines will go up.

If all goes per the planned schedule construction will be completed and commissioning work will see the site completed and operational by the end of November this year.


Click here to view the map on Google Maps.
Turbine locations are approximate and are taken from the Kiata Wind Farm Project Summary document released by Windlab.