Western Australia names Clean Energy Link – East contractors to unlock 2.3GW of solar and wind

Announcing the contracts on 14 October, the state government said the completed project is expected to unlock around 2.3GW of renewable energy capacity.

Acciona put the value of Stage 1 at AU$655 million (US$455 million), while UGL said its share of the work is expected to bring in around AU$478 million in revenue.

CEL-East will expand the South West Interconnected System (SWIS), Western Australia’s largest electricity network. It serves Perth and much of the state’s south-west. The network is operated by state-owned company Western Power, which is leading the project.

CEL-East follows Clean Energy Link – North, which is part of an AU$1.6 billion state investment in electricity transmission. All three contractors are also working on that project.

Stage 1 includes a new 330kV terminal at Cordering, south of Darkan and around 200km south of Perth, and expansions at the existing Shotts and Muja terminals near Collie. It also covers 38km of new 330kV transmission lines between Shotts and Cordering and 54km between Muja and Cordering.

The new Cordering terminal falls to Acciona. The Spanish infrastructure group has worked in Australia since 2002 and is already laying cable for CEL-North in the Perth area. The terminal will open with six bays and room to expand.

Acciona’s Peter Regan, chief executive of Acciona Infrastructure Australia and New Zealand, said: “Clean Energy Link East builds on the momentum established through Clean Energy Link North.”

UGL has three packages: the Shotts Terminal expansion, enabling works around Muja Terminal and the new lines linking the three terminals, which will add four circuits.

The Sydney-based engineering business, part of CIMIC Group, said work is expected to start this month.

The third contractor is GenusPlus. The Western Australian engineering and construction firm, which is listed on the Australian Securities Exchange (ASX), won a contract worth around AU$270 million on CEL-North in January 2025.

It has now informed the exchange that it will design and build an upgrade to an existing 330kV terminal for CEL-East, with completion due in early 2029. The work was announced alongside other Western Power and Fortescue awards worth around AU$255 million.

The government expects the project to create 300 jobs at first, rising to 600 at the peak of construction.

Amber-Jade Sanderson, Western Australia’s minister for energy and decarbonisation, said the project “will deliver more affordable energy to WA households, while supporting local jobs.”

Opening up the south-west to wind and solar

CEL-East targets renewable energy projects in the South West and Wheatbelt regions, where Western Power has already secured land for the Darkan terminal.

According to Western Power, Stage 1 alone is expected to add around 1.6GW of renewable energy capacity, with later stages planned to include terminals near Darkan and in the Shire of Williams.

In the north of the grid, work on CEL-North began in July, with the aim of easing a bottleneck that limits how much power the solar-rich Mid West can send into the SWIS.

Western Power expects construction to finish by the end of 2029, with the project in operation by 2030. That timing lines up with the planned retirement of the state’s coal-fired power stations, several of which are in Collie.

Premier Roger Cook said the state had granted CEL-East Priority Project status and was “fast-tracking its delivery”, with the aim of “ensuring our grid is ready for when we get out of state-owned coal by 2030.”

The town already hosts battery storage, including Neoen’s 2,000MWh Collie battery energy storage system (BESS), whose first stage came online in 2024, as well as Synergy’s own 2.4GWh Collie BESS.

Collie-Preston MLA Jodie Hanns said the expansion would keep Collie at the heart of the SWIS.

In April, the government announced a AU$1.4 billion Clean Energy Fund to support projects including CEL-East. It said the north and east links together are expected to deliver 3GW of renewable energy and around 800 construction jobs.

A third link, CEL-Kwinana, is planned to support 900MW of new electricity demand in the Western Trade Coast industrial area south of Perth.