NSW's Only Wind Project Plants Final Turbine Foundations as Coal State Gets a New Grid Link
Squadron Energy completed delivery and installation of all 69 turbine foundation cages at its 414 megawatt Uungula wind farm in New South Wales's Central West region by early June 2026 (2026-06-02), a construction milestone for what remains the only utility-scale wind project actively being built in Australia's biggest coal-producing state.2
NSW's coal dependence makes Uungula's progress stand out. The state generates more electricity from coal than any other in Australia, and its ageing fleet has not faced the pace of renewable displacement seen in South Australia or Victoria. Uungula is one project. But its progress through the foundation phase demonstrates that utility-scale wind construction can move in NSW at a time when competing projects have stalled at planning or financing hurdles.2
The project is advancing alongside a significant grid upgrade. Transgrid energised the final New South Wales section of Project EnergyConnect in June 2026 (2026-06-11), completing a 900-kilometre interconnector linking South Australia and NSW after delays and cost overruns on the NSW side.4,3 The South Australian section was delivered on time and within budget; the NSW component was not. Transgrid eventually brought the full link into service, and the completed interconnector changes the commercial context for any new NSW generation.3
When South Australian wind production exceeds local demand, NSW previously could absorb only limited volumes through the constrained link. With the interconnector now fully energised, Central West wind output like Uungula's will operate in a more competitive dispatch environment — one where imports from South Australia can compress prices when renewable supply elsewhere is ample, and provide a backstop when it is not.3,4
Nationally, the energy transition is gathering pace but also running into investment headwinds. The Clean Energy Council's 2026 report, published in May 2026 (2026-05-25), showed renewable energy supplying 42.7% of Australia's electricity in 2025, up from 38.9% the year before. The final quarter of 2025 was the first in which renewables exceeded 50% of NEM supply over a three-month period.1
New capacity completions reached 5.9 GW in 2025, a 28.3% increase year-on-year, but the mix was heavily skewed toward rooftop solar and batteries rather than utility-scale wind. Twelve large-scale battery projects totalling 2 GW came online across the NEM and the South West Interconnected System last year, up from 600 MW in 2024, placing Australia third globally in utility-scale battery deployment behind China and the United States.1 The CEC warned that rising inflation and regulatory friction were suppressing investment in new large-scale wind and solar — a dynamic most acute in NSW, where Uungula stands as the exception rather than the rule.1
The local manufacturing angle at Uungula has been one of the project's distinguishing features. All 69 of the steel turbine foundation cages were built in the Central West region and then transported to site.2 Keeping that fabrication work local builds supply-chain capacity that could support later NSW projects if the development environment improves.
Australia's dollar was trading at $0.69 against the US dollar on Tuesday (2026-06-23), a rate that pushes up the local cost of imported turbine components priced in euros or US dollars. Currency exposure has been a persistent pressure point across large-scale Australian projects through their construction phases, and Uungula's commissioning costs will reflect that headwind.
Foundation completion sets up the next construction phase: tower erection and turbine installation, followed by transformer and substation commissioning before generation begins. Squadron has not published a target commissioning date. The pace at which towers and equipment are installed will be the clearest indicator of whether NSW can add meaningful wind capacity before its next coal retirement cycle forces the question of what replaces it.2