Customer Case Study:
The Ararat Terminal Station (ARTS) is located 190km north-west of Melbourne, just north of Elmhurst Township in the Pyrenees region of western Victoria, Australia. The electricity produced by the new Ararat Wind Farm is transmitted to the ARTS terminal station.
The brief was to design, build, transport, connect, and energise a terminal station to support Australia’s third largest wind farm and successfully link 75 turbines to deliver 242 MW of renewable energy capacity to the National Electricity market in 14 months.
The scope of work also included managing the numerous suppliers and contractors as well as the interface between the stakeholders in the project which included Australian Energy Market Operator (AEMO), AusNet Services (ANS), Ararat Wind Farm (AWF) and Australian Energy Operations (AEO).
The ARTS structural design included more than 180 steel yard support structures, three 25m-tall gantry ‘A’ frames, three modular control room buildings, a precast transformer bund and precast fire wall structures. Over 22 km of transmission lines and conductor stringing were installed across 106 poles. The 250MVA transformer alone weighed an impressive 220 tonnes and was transferred across Victoria via a 4.2m wide, 50 m long transport vehicle.
In a major innovation first, traditional concrete support structures where replaced by timber piles in a cruciform shape. This reduced the foundation construction time, cost and the amount of concrete used in the project. It is the first time that engineered timber piles made from farmed Australian pine trees have been used in a large-scale environmentally friendly project, reducing carbon emissions by 33 tonnes.
The new design allowed for a faster and more effective installation, saving the project over three weeks in time and 20% in cost savings. On a project with such a critical and compressed timeline, this contribution played an important part in achieving overall project milestones.
