Contracts awarded in ‘largest and most important' project to bring Midwest renewable energy to Perth
Ms Sanderson said on Wednesday morning $342 million worth of contracts had been awarded to three companies to construct more 26.5km of overhead transmission lines to better connect Perth to renewable projects.
UGL Engineering, GenusPlus and Acciona will all take part in projects on the lines as well as constructing terminals which will run from Western Power's Northern Terminal in Malaga to Three Springs.
Work is already underway on the projects.
Ms Sanderson acknowledged there will be disruptions during the work but said the project was an important one.
'With any major infrastructure project you're going to get disruptions, but this is critical to essentially connecting households to clean energy,' she said.
'The community quite rightly expects and demands that they have access to renewable energy, reliable, affordable, renewable energy, and that's what this trade transmission line will deliver.'
The South West Interconnected System is the energy grid which connects the South West of Western Australia, running from the Midwest to the Goldfields and Great Southern.
According to the State Government the upgraded infrastructure would connect Perth homes to around 400MW worth of existing wind power and a further 1GW of renewable energy to come.
Ms Sanderson said impacted communities and individuals would be consulted.
'Western Power have been consulting carefully with local governments impacted along the line route, with individual land holders as well,' she said.
'They've gone through all of the appropriate approvals processes, enormous amount of meticulous planning and approvals work has been undertaken to deliver this project.
'I'm confident that the team at Western Power and our contracting partners will manage that carefully.'
Western Power chief executive officer Sam Barbaro said the upgraded infrastructure would allow the renewable energy to reach the Perth market.
'Some of WA's, and indeed the world's, best renewable resources are in the Midwest of Western Australia which creates significant opportunities for our state for large-scale solar and wind generation,' he said.
'That's why the Clean Energy Link North project is so important, it will unlock these amazing resources and take that renewable energy to the community where it needs it.'
Shadow energy minister Steve Thomas said while the upgrades were welcome, there was a lack of long-term public planning.
'We all know and acknowledge that more transmissions lines are needed and in fact the Government is years behind where it needed to be if they were to be any chance at all of completing their energy transition by their target date of October 2029,' he said.
'This announcement is premature however, as it commits hundreds of millions of taxpayers' dollars before the plan defining how the transition will work has even been finalised and released.
'The Government's Whole of System Plan was released in 2020 but was rapidly out of date. An updated version was due to be released in 2023, but two years later we're still waiting for it.'
Ms Anderson said she intended to release the 'broad SWIS plan' later in the year to provide plans on the exact configuration of the transmission lines.
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