An Australian cost guide in AUD: capital cost per megawatt, what drives the price, installation, and operations and maintenance. Indicative figures only.
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How much does a wind turbine cost? For a modern utility-scale machine in Australia the answer usually lands near AUD 1.5 to 2.5 million per installed megawatt, all in, but the real number depends on the turbine chosen, the site, the grid connection and the scale of the project. This guide breaks the cost down in plain terms and sets it against Australian wind farm examples. Every figure here is indicative.
The most useful way to think about turbine cost is per installed megawatt, because it lets you compare machines and projects of different sizes. As an indicative benchmark, a new onshore utility-scale turbine in Australia tends to sit around AUD 1.5 to 2.5 million per MW once everything needed to make it generate is included. On that basis a single 4 MW turbine, fully delivered and commissioned, can run to roughly AUD 6 to 10 million, while a 100 MW wind farm can reach several hundred million dollars. The per-MW figure usually falls as projects get larger, because fixed costs are spread across more capacity.
A turbine project is not one price but several stacked together. The main drivers are:
Because these pieces interact, two projects with identical turbines can land at quite different per-MW costs once site and connection are accounted for.
Installation sits inside the balance-of-plant and civil works described above, but it is worth separating out because it is where Australian conditions bite hardest. Blades over 70 metres and nacelles weighing 70 to 100 tonnes have to be transported to site, often along long rural routes, and lifted into place with specialist cranes. Crane mobilisation alone is a significant line item, which is why owners planning major works look closely at crane hire and coordinated main component exchange to spread that fixed cost across as much work as possible. Weather windows, remote accommodation and road upgrades all add to the installed cost and are easy to underestimate in early budgets.
Australia now has a large installed wind fleet, with major projects such as the Macarthur, Coopers Gap, Stockyard Hill and Golden Plains developments running to hundreds of megawatts each. Projects of that scale generally benefit from the per-MW economies described above, and newer developments increasingly use larger 5 to 7 MW class machines to push cost per MW down further. On a generation basis, the levelised cost of energy (LCOE) for new onshore wind in Australia is frequently cited somewhere in the region of AUD 45 to 90 per MWh, which is competitive with most other new-build generation. LCOE rolls capital, financing, operations and the expected energy yield into a single cost per unit of electricity, so it is sensitive to the local wind resource and to connection costs. These remain broad, indicative ranges rather than quotes for any specific site.
The sticker price is only the beginning. Over a 20 to 30 year life, operations and maintenance (O&M) is a substantial share of the total cost of ownership. A common rule of thumb puts O&M at roughly AUD 1.5 to 2.5 cents per kWh generated, or tens of thousands of dollars per turbine per year once scheduled service, inspections, consumables, remote monitoring and a provision for major components are included. Costs are lowest in the early years under OEM warranty and tend to climb as the machine ages and as gearboxes, generators, main bearings and blades move into their wear-out phase. This is exactly the transition we cover in our blog on the Australian wind fleet leaving warranty.
Owners manage this through planned wind turbine maintenance, timely gearbox, generator and drivetrain repair when major components fail, and ready access to spare parts. Getting these settled before the warranty lapses is usually cheaper than reacting to the first unplanned failure.
Everything above describes commercial, utility-scale wind. Small wind, the kilowatt-scale turbines sold for farms, homes and off-grid sites, works to completely different economics. On a per-kW basis small turbines are far more expensive to install than utility machines, because they cannot spread foundation, connection and crane costs across much capacity, and their lower hub heights capture a weaker, gustier wind resource. For most Australian landowners chasing cheaper electricity, rooftop solar now undercuts small wind on cost per kWh, so small wind tends to make sense only where the site is genuinely windy and solar is constrained. The large per-MW economies that make commercial wind competitive simply do not apply at that scale.
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