Chinese-made wind turbines on Australia's biggest wind farm have cracked, sparking outrage that the project didn't use locally made machinery.Nineteen of 40 turbines inspected at the Stockyard Hill wind farm, in Victoria's central highlands, are defective and will take months to fix, according to the Australian Manufacturing Worker's Union.
Another 109 turbines were yet to be inspected and it was feared they could also be damaged. The massive wind farm, which is Australia's biggest, was operating for less than five months.
The AMWU, which found the damage in inspections, savaged the federal government for not forcing the project's developers to buy Australian-made turbines.
'The federal government sat on it's hands while our largest wind farm imported towers from China instead of supporting local jobs,' it said.
'Shame on the federal government for not mandating local content.'
The project was started by Windpower Australia, then sold to Origin Energy, which sold it to Xinjiang Goldwind, a Chinese-owned company, for $110 million.
Goldwind, which owns or operates nine wind and solar farms in Australia, is part of Xinjiang Goldwind Science & Technology Co, the world's biggest wind turbine manufacturer, based in Beijing. Mail Online - link - Peter Vincent - link - The Stockyard Hill Wind Farm - link - more like this - link - more like this (Australia) - link
No comments:
Post a Comment