Granville Harbour Wind Farm

The Granville Harbour Wind Farm is an 840-hectare site on an elevated basalt cap of prime grazing pasture located 1.5km inland from the west coast of Tasmania.

Lucas TCS was engaged by Vestas as the Civil Balance of Plant (CBOP) Contractor to design and construct all site civil infrastructure including roads, hard stands and tower foundations for the 31-turbine project.

Each turbine footing was engineered to support a 200m high wind turbine. Due to the condition of the ground, each footing was 20m in diameter and contained 700m3 of concrete with 80 tonnes of steel reinforcement. In an Australian first, innovative controlled modulus columns (CMCs or grout piles) were constructed below the base of 27 tower foundations to overcome unsuitable ground conditions. Each of these foundations were supported by up to 135 CMCs extending between 4.5m to 21.5m deep.

Collectively across the 31 turbines around 45km of controlled modulus columns were installed, over 20,000m3 of concrete was poured and 2,200 tonnes of steel reinforcement was placed in the turbine foundations. The project included 280,000m3 of cut and 120,000m3 of fill bulk earthworks, 125,000m3 of drill and blast, 230,000 tonnes of crushed pavement materials and 19km of new road while contending with an annual rainfall of 2 meters (this is double the average rainfall from previous years).

This project was a Tasmanian State Finalist in the Australian Engineering Excellence Awards in 2020.