Mount Emerald Wind Farm: our crew, start to finish

The project

Mount Emerald Wind Farm sits on the Atherton Tablelands near Walkamin, west of Cairns: 53 Vestas turbines and 180 megawatts, owned by RATCH-Australia and one of the largest renewable energy projects in Queensland when it was built. It sent its first power into the grid in August 2018.

Vestas held the main contract. Consolidated Power Projects, a major subcontractor to Vestas, built the electrical network that ties it together: around 40 kilometres of underground cable connecting the turbines, and the substation that feeds it all into the grid.

Our part in it

BH Electrics put a crew together for Consolidated Power Projects and employed every one of them, seventeen people at the peak. We were on site from the beginning of construction through to the end of commissioning, working to Consolidated Power Projects' programme and under its site management.

It was not just electricians. The job needed specialist electricians, trade assistants, safety officers and administration as well, and BH employed all of them, so the work could be run safely and to what the site project managers needed from one day to the next.

How a Port Douglas electrician ended up on a wind farm

Mostly, Brad. Before BH Electrics he came up through heavy industry, in timber mills and with Rio Tinto, around the kind of industrial plant and permit-to-work systems that most domestic and commercial electricians never see. A contractor looking for a crew wants somebody who already speaks that language, and he did.

The rest was where we are. Mount Emerald is a drive up the range from Craiglie, not a flight from Brisbane, and a contractor building in the Far North needs people who are already here, know the roads and the wet season, and can be on site at short notice. Being close meant we could pull a team together quickly and keep it supplied.

What our crew did on it

• Earthing of the turbines
• Cable laying across the underground network connecting the turbines
• Substation construction
• Commissioning support through to energisation

The project is finished

Mount Emerald has been generating since 2018, and BH Electrics is back to what it does from Craiglie: homes, resorts, fit-outs and commercial maintenance across the Douglas Shire and the Cairns northern beaches.

It is on this site because it happened, and because the company that put that crew together is the one that turns up at your place.