Remote Australian wind farm will use 616-foot self-erecting towers that rise without giant cranes in the Pilbara
At a faraway place like the Pilbara in Western Australia, where the landscape is extremely difficult to access, the first turbine blades are now reaching the little town of Nullagine. This project is totally different from anything seen yet.
Fortescue Metals Group’s Nullagine Wind Farm Project will use 17 turbines erected up to a height of 616 feet. No cranes needed here either. The towers of the project are self-erecting towers supplied by the Spanish company, Nabrawind. Such technology has never been used before in such magnitude for land-based wind farms.
Blades in the Pilbara: A milestone in the making
The first components of turbines have arrived at Port Hedland and then made their way to Nullagine. And this alone says a lot about what we are talking about here. In the Pilbara it takes more than just a vehicle to move large-scale industrial equipment across this huge, sun-baked area.
Whatever comes out of it will be not only sufficient for the needs of the mining plant but will also alter the rules of wind energy utilization in harsh landscapes.
The arrival of the blades means that construction work can start for real. After completion, the project of 133 MW capacity will employ 17 wind turbines, sufficient for providing renewable energy needs of Fortescue Metals in the Pilbara.
Self-constructing towers: How Nabrawind’s Nabralift technology works
The construction of conventional wind turbines relies on huge cranes, which are not only extremely expensive but also difficult to transport and almost impossible to use when there are strong winds. In harsh conditions, they might actually become the biggest challenge for the construction of a wind power plant.
However, Nabrawind’s Nabralift HH188 works in a completely different way. It features Skylift self-erection technology, which allows lifting the whole wind turbine without using any big cranes, even at wind speeds of up to 15 m/s. The tower is able to lift itself, section by section.
Each wind tower is expected to rise to hub heights of approximately 616 feet, thereby creating an unprecedented world record in terms of onshore wind towers. Not only does this method make things more cost-effective but it also lowers safety concerns as well as reduces the size of the convoy required to reach such sites.
Built for low wind, designed to go higher
Nullagine’s 17 turbines are provided by Envision Energy, and each of them is rated at 7.8 MW, according to Fortescue. It is designed to work in low wind conditions, which is quite important because winds at the level of the earth’s surface in the Pilbara region tend to be quite erratic.
And it all comes down to elevation. Wind turbine generators are tall enough to get themselves above the layer where air turbulence happens and receive steady winds. The difference in power generated by the ground-level winds and at the required height is significant.
Pilbara could be considered as an unlikely candidate for wind power generation; however, the sheer size of the area, its existing infrastructure for industry, and the presence of Fortescue there, make sense from the strategic perspective. The harshness of the environment is an obstacle to be faced and overcome.
Fortescue’s Green Grid project and the reason behind the purchase of the tower company by Fortescue
The Nullagine project doesn’t stand alone. It’s a component of Fortescue’s Green Grid — an integrated system combining wind, solar, battery storage, and transmission infrastructure designed to power the company’s mining operations entirely on renewable energy. It directly supports Fortescue’s “Real Zero” target: eliminating fossil fuels from operations, not just offsetting them.
Now, Fortescue holds a total ownership of Nabrawind, and this is more than just a supply agreement. By owning Nabrawind, Fortescue gains the manufacturing capability itself, which shows the significance of the self-erecting towers for Fortescue’s carbon-free process and how it cannot be achieved only through vendor collaboration. Nullagine is used as a foundation of the whole portfolio of wind power generation in the region of the Pilbara. It is designed to develop.
Global model emerging in the outback
The construction at Nullagine will become the first large-scale implementation of the Nabralift HH188 Towers, thus serving as the proof-of-concept for the whole wind industry. The engineers and developers involved in developing infrastructure in the hard-to-reach territories across the world will be observing the process closely. The fact that the self-erecting technology proves itself efficient in the conditions of one of the harshest Australian territories might indeed alter the approaches to the planning and construction of remote wind power plants.
Construction is proceeding through the next few months in and around the small town of Nullagine. Whatever comes out of it will be not only sufficient for the needs of the mining plant but will also alter the rules of wind energy utilization in harsh landscapes.
Kelly is an experienced writer with 15 years of experience exploring the big stories that shape our world, from tech breakthroughs and space exploration to climate, energy, and the fascinating quirks of science. She has a talent for turning complex ideas into sharp, memorable insights that stay with readers long after they’ve finished reading.
