Victoria selects 60km grid route for Gippsland offshore wind as first 2GW auction launches
The Victorian corridor advances Australia's inaugural offshore wind tender, though no offshore wind project in the country has yet reached operation.
Victoria identified a preferred 60-kilometre transmission corridor on Tuesday (2026-09-22) to connect the state's first offshore wind projects off the Gippsland coast to the electricity grid, clearing a planning milestone as Australia launched its inaugural offshore wind auction.5
The auction covers 2 gigawatts of capacity — enough to power around 1.5 million homes by official estimates — and the broader Gippsland offshore programme is expected to attract more than $20 billion in investment to Victoria over time, with $3.1 billion projected for Gippsland communities from the first auction round alone, according to published government figures.5
Those are projections, not committed capital. Getting from a preferred route to energised undersea cables requires environmental approvals, marine surveys, offshore cable procurement, and binding grid connection agreements — steps that have tripped up less technically complex projects in Australia before.5
The procurement ambitions behind the auction are not in doubt. Capacity Investment Scheme Tender 7, results published in May (2026-05-24), awarded 7.8GW of renewable energy to 19 projects across the National Electricity Market, exceeding the original 5GW target by more than 50%. The tender attracted 53 bids totalling 18.6GW of capacity, a sign that developers are willing to commit at scale when policy frameworks are clear.1
Wind dominated that tender. Of the 7.8GW awarded, 4.8GW went to wind against 3GW for solar. New South Wales took the largest state share: nine projects, roughly 3.9GW of generation and 6.4GWh of storage. ASL described Tender 7 as the largest single allocation under the CIS framework, surpassing Tender 4's 6.6GW outcome.1
But the tender pipeline has run ahead of the grid. Transgrid's experience with Project EnergyConnect illustrates the gap. The company said in June (2026-06-09) it had finally energised its 700-kilometre link following delays and major cost overruns; the South Australia section was delivered on time and on budget, but the New South Wales portion was not.2
The Gippsland offshore route is shorter and less technically complex than EnergyConnect. One parallel holds, though: route identification is an administrative first step, and Australia's approvals timelines for large energy infrastructure have consistently run past initial schedules.2,5
AEMO's 2026 Integrated System Plan, published in late June (2026-06-29), called for nearly 120GW of utility-scale wind and solar across the NEM by 2050. The 2GW Gippsland tranche is the first line on that list.3
Globally, the offshore wind market was valued at $57.51 billion in 2026 and is projected to reach $208.33 billion by 2035, driven by larger turbine deployments and expanded pipelines across Asia-Pacific markets including Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, and Australia, according to Asian Power.4
Supply chain position matters here. Australia enters the global turbine procurement queue without any operating offshore wind projects — a weaker commercial track record than European or established East Asian developers carry. Turbine manufacturers allocating production capacity across competing markets will weigh that absence.4,5
ASL noted that Tender 7's overallocation relative to its original target signals government urgency on emissions reduction. The Gippsland route announcement fits that pattern. Still, Australia has no operating offshore wind projects. The distance from route identification to delivered power — through environmental consenting, marine approvals, turbine contracts, and grid connection — is the test the sector has yet to run.1,5