Our First Community Wind Park – Not Waiting For Government
Find Out How Small Businesses Can Avoid Legal Pitfalls
July 24, 2008Etiko – National Banksia Award Winner
July 26, 2008The Hepburn Renewable Energy Association (HREA) is a group of voluntary members who came up with the idea of a community owned wind farm to reduce the whole area’s greenhouse foot print.
A Co-op known as Hepburn Wind has been established to offer the opportunity of community ownership of wind turbines in Hepburn. The Wind Park is designed not only to reduce the greenhouse footprint but to return benefits directly back to the local community. The energy produced by the turbines will be equivalent to approximately 2,300 homes – nearly all of Daylesford and Hepburn Springs. This represents a saving in CO2 emissions of 12,000 tonnes per year, equivalent to removing 2,800 cars from the road.
Control Of Project
Hepburn Wind signed key contracts with Future Energy on 3 July 2008, officially taking over the control of the project. Chairman of Hepburn Wind, Simon Holmes à Court said:
“Hepburn Wind is now officially the owner of Australia’s first community-owned wind park…We have worked with Future Energy for the last few years, though the planning and approvals processes. We put a lot of work into consulting with the community. Now, we are an important step closer to showing Australia what community pride and enthusiasm can achieve.”
Future Energy is engaged as the project manager for the Wind Park. With the signing of the contracts now complete, the Hepburn Community Wind Park now moves on to
the next phase of the project, the capital raising process which begins today.
For more info see: www.hepburnwind.com.au, www.futureenergy.com.au
OR
Contact: per.bernard@hepburnwind.com.au or simon.holmesacourt@hepburnwind.com.au
About The Co-Op
Hepburn Wind is a registered co-operative (Hepburn Community Wind Park Co-operative Ltd). Hepburn Wind will be the owner and operator of the Community Wind Park. It is managed by an elected Board of Directors, representing the community, as well as business and environmental interests.
As a community owned wind farm, locals and non-locals alike will have the opportunity to invest in the Hepburn Community Wind Park, investing in wind energy AND in the future of generations to come.
Click here for the Share Offer.
Well done HREA!
8 Comments
Brilliant Concept. If Governments are too slow to move. Lets Move them.
Brilliant! This is the only way projects like this are going to be realised – if communities start them. We can all make a difference, especially if we join together.
If this project was so good why has the developer failed to put the wind speed data in the prospectus?
I wouldnt invest anything in something that is not going to save emmisions due to it intermittancy anyway, better to install a home wind turbine at least you can then use the electricity when the wind is blowing, but with these large projects you are really just relying on coal
[…] saving, with other like-minded people we made a small investment in a wind farm. It will be the first community-owned wind farm in Australia and it’s to be built just outside […]
Hey Phil.
If you do some research about wind energy, you will realise that wind energy is actually not intermittant. If you create several wind farms across an area, such as across the Victorian coastline and the South Australian coastline, as is gradually happening, you cater for wind variability and reduce intermittancy. Look at the enormous grid production systems in Europe that spread across national and state borders generating enormous yields of wind; and here in Victoria we have much more powerful wind spots in many areas! Furthermore it is extremely hard to create individual home turbines. How many have you actually seen? And how many people would be willing to pay for one on their own home, compared to a community project such as this one which not only produced sustainable electricity, but also allows the community to actually profit. Projects like these are demonstrating that reliance upon coal is, albeit very slowly, gradually reducing and hopefully in two decades time our energy source picture will be very different.
Hey Kath, I think you are the one who should be doing your own in deph research and not relying on here say or word of mouth.Make sure you get it right.
Hey Kath,
“If you create several wind farms across an area, such as across the Victorian coastline and the South Australian coastline, as is gradually happening, you cater for wind variability and reduce intermittancy. Look at the enormous grid production systems in Europe that spread across national and state borders…”
Would you want to live in the vicinity of huge wind-farms? Would you want to go to the beach if all you could see was giant turbines, and all you could hear was a low-level humming that is known to cause depression, headaches and health problems? And on really hot days, when all the air conditioners are turned on and the wind doesn’t blow, we’ll still rely on coal. Wind farms are a fraud. They don’t make money from selling electricity. They make money from selling carbon credits to the big polluters. Yep, if you have a wind farm you get carbon credits that you can sell. As I said, wind power is a fraud.
The real questions to ask are:
“How much coal have we saved so far in Victoria?”
“How much coal will we save in the future?”
Until we can answer these questions with evidence, why would we install them and pay them our hard earned taxes?
Sure, turbines intermittently abate the coal generator output, by 8% of their installed capacity, but does this effect a change to the brown coal input for the Latrobe generators?
The Latrobe generators can reduce their output by 20% to accommodate the varying wind power, but reducing the generator’s output does not necessarily reduce the amount of coal burned.
An abatement of the power required is one thing, reducing the actual brown coal burned is quite another. Why don’t we know?