Gold Fields awards wind turbine contract as part of St Ives Renewable Energy project
Gold Fields has awarded a contract to Goldwind to design, manufacture and construct seven wind turbines for its St Ives gold mine, located 80km south of Kalgoorlie in Western Australia.
The turbines will form a 42MW wind farm as part of Gold Fields’ landmark $296m St Ives Renewable Energy project, which will become one of Western Australia’s largest renewable energy initiatives at an existing mine site.
It’s not the number of turbines that’s news, but their gargantuan size. Together, these elements make the project one of the largest to be commissioned at an existing mine site in WA. Mobile batching plants will be deployed to the site in Kambalda to mix the 900m3 volume of concrete and allow for continuous pours at each of the seven turbine bases.
The entire renewable system is projected to provide power for 73% of the St Ives site and reduce the mine’s carbon emissions by approximately 50% by 2030.
Gold Fields Principal Specialist and Project Director Simon Schmid said the St Ives project was part of Gold Fields’ expanding decarbonisation initiatives at its ten sites and projects across Australia, South Africa, Ghana, Canada and South America.
“We have already made significant progress at our Australian operations, using renewable energy and BESS to generate and store 16MW at Gruyere, 20MW at Granny Smith and 35MW at Agnew.
“We are excited to see the project’s contribution to our broader global decarbonisation strategy, which contains a target of 30% net emission reduction by 2030, reinforcing our long-term and growing commitment to sustainability,” explained Schmid.
Turbine manufacturing is already underway, with the components expected to arrive in Western Australia in September 2025, before being transported to the site and construction beginning the following month.
Once commissioned, the project will transform St Ives to be predominantly (73%) powered by clean, green energy, as part of Gold Fields’ growing commitment to ESG and decarbonisation initiatives. Switching on St Ives will help accelerate total renewable electricity consumption across Gold Fields’ global business to 25%, almost double that of 2022.
Goldwind’s General Manager of Sales and Marketing, William Ives, said the company was building on its delivery of turbines to Gold Fields in WA.
“Goldwind is pleased to deliver the wind farm component of the St Ives Mine project, the second renewable energy microgrid project in partnership with Gold Fields,” he said.
As part of the St Ives renewables program, Gold Fields has partnered with leading creative consultancy, FORM Building a State of Creativity, to collaborate with local school students and an emerging Indigeous artist in creating a series of artworks that will be showcased on the turbines.
“This program fosters collaboration, creativity and connection and celebrates community by encouraging young artists to share their interpretations of wind as an energy source and what it means to their communities,” Schmid said.
“Their artwork will be showcased across many different applications, including on the turbine cells themselves, which are 130m high once constructed.”
Solar
The project also includes a 35MW solar farm, which is currently under construction in partnership with Pacific Energy and should be completed in the first half of 2026.
Pacific Energy has received the first batch of solar support frames, the steel frames supporting the individual panels. Those frames will support 66,000 solar panels, stretched across a 2.5sqkm footprint.
Some of those components include the solar inverter enclosures and platforms, which Pacific Energy designs and manufactures locally.
The company’s metal fabricators and tradespeople team will construct and assemble the inverter enclosures and Australian steel platforms in its Perth-based workshops. In-house electricians then connect the inverter technology, which undergoes onsite factory acceptance tests to ensure the highest quality and performance standards.
Energy consumption at St Ives is not expected to increase or decrease dramatically. However, transitioning to a greater renewable energy mix will positively impact production costs by reducing reliance on traditionally more expensive grid energy. Ultimately, this project is anticipated to lower power costs to a third of what was previously projected at St Ives without renewables.
Goldfields’ 2030 target of reducing Scope 1 and 2 emissions by a net 30% against its 2016 baseline remains. Gold Fields has also committed to Net Zero by 2050.