The largest wind farm in the Southern Hemisphere will be built in Australia at Macarthur near Hamilton, 260km west of Melbourne, Victoria. Comprising 140 Vestas V112-3.0 MW wind turbine generators, the 420 MW Macarthur Wind Farm will have the capacity to power more than 220,000 average Victorian homes and abate more than 1.7 million tons of greenhouse gases every year – the equivalent of taking more than 420,000 cars off the road each year.

Power companies AGL and Meridian will each fund 50 percent of the capital construction costs, while AGL will acquire all of the wind farm’s energy output and renewable energy certificates. Recent enhancements to the Australian Government’s 2020 Renewable Energy Target (RET) scheme will require around 9,500 MW of new renewable energy generation capacity to be built this decade. The Macarthur Wind Farm is expected to be fully operational in 2013 at a time when it will be needed to meet the legislated demand for Renewable Energy Certificates under the RET scheme.