If you love the view from the top of your farm looking out over the surrounding countryside, then let’s hope you are not near the coast or major power lines or in a windy part of Western Australia because the state and federal governments and the men and women with white shoes are quietly pouring over maps looking for sites that will become tomorrow’s wind farms.
The rush for locations to house what will be hundreds of new wind turbines is being supercharged by the federal government’s 43 per cent 2030 emissions target and the WA government’s planned closure of their two coal fired power stations.
Quite why we are shutting down the perfectly good 300MW Collie Power Station which was only built in 1999 and has 50 years of life left in it is beyond me. Why not keep it for the inevitable blackouts that come with the move to relying on the wind to blow or the sun to shine.
The rule of thumb is that for every megawatt of reliable dispatchable coal, gas or nuclear power you shut down you need to build 3 x the MW in renewables plus kilometers of heavy power lines to spread the wind risk, not to mention mega batteries to manage the fluctuating load.
And once you have done that you still need to duplicate the whole system with a fast start up back up system for those windless nights.
Don’t believe me; then get a quote for your home to go off grid and see what it costs you to put in a 24/7 365-day 99 per cent reliable system with no diesel gen set back up.
No one is arguing that the sun and wind is not free compared to the cost of buying coal or gas, you just need to accept that you will remain cold and dark on winter windless nights like the Europeans if you don’t have a 100 per cent backup.
But putting all this aside, what I actually want to talk about is the impact of the replacement wind farms on the state or specifically on the households that have to stare out the kitchen window at them going round and round (or more often than not, not going round at all – funny how often some are shut down).
While it seems the WA Premier was keen to hear all the positive accolades from his decision to shut down the two coal fired power stations, he was less interested in the question as to where the replacement wind farms would be situated.
One has to ask, who are the lucky households who will get the pleasure of watching these spinning blades from their kitchen windows, who will be close enough to be lulled asleep at night by the steady whum whum of the big fans.
The deafening silence on this relatively simple question makes me suspicious that politically the government knows that, while everyone is looking forward to the reduction of their power bills that has been promised by the federal government, no one is expecting to have to share their landscape with a 650ft tower or watch the reflection of the neighbour’s hill covered in hundreds of hectares of solar panels.
I suspect this is because our political masters know there are likely to be howls of outrage from those who get to share their homes with these large industrial eyesores.
When we go to Europe, we like to look at castles, monasteries and grand houses perched on top of hills. In Australia, overseas visitors come here to look at the natural beauty of our great outdoors.
Our current international tourism ads market Western Australia to the world as a dreamy, wild, free place of beauty. No wind farms to be seen in their latest $15m global advertising campaign.
Not surprisingly, as no one wants to visit the land of the triffids all covered in giant War of the World industrial machines towering over the landscape visible from tens of kilometres away.
This story begs the question, how important is our image of the great Australian outdoors to us?
Do we think that the pursuit of expensive free wind power merits the spoiling of our landscape and the destruction of birdlife by hundreds of massive wind turbines?
The federal government clearly thinks so as they have recently passed legislation that allows them to build massive new wind farms in Commonwealth waters, which start three nautical miles from the coastline.
While offshore wind farms in Europe are common, the key difference is that most of them are situated many kilometres from the coast, with the world’s largest wind farm over 100 kilometres off the coast of the United Kingdom.
The problem with big 200m tall turbines is they can be seen from a long way away and they need to be in water no deeper than 60m, in fact the closer to shore the better as it reduces cabling costs.
Currently there are plans for five large offshore wind farms to be built between Busselton and Geraldton.
The commercial fishermen, particularly the rock lobster fishers, are going berserk as these towers will all have 500m exclusion zones which will eat into their fishing grounds with no compensation payable for the loss of their property rights.
As for those who enjoy the vista from our beautiful beaches and coastal houses, they can now have the added attraction of big man-made towers to gaze upon.
Who wants to come to Western Australia to see the white sandy beaches and rolling dunes that we market in our international tourism ads only to find hundreds of massive turbines despoiling the view?
Even worse would be looking at them from the kitchen window from your expensive coastal house, mind you the teal voting western suburb set who can afford ocean views probably deserve to be looking at them.
Still, the ocean is public and not private property, and the state and federal governments can do what they want with crown land, but what about when someone wants to build a wind farm on the neighbour’s property and it impacts on your view?
Do neighbouring farmers get a say? Answer, no. Just as you don’t get a say over the location of the Western Power poles that march over your farm, you also can’t say no to a wind farm next door or the mega power lines built over your place to service them.
The only restriction is the set back. Once they are placed back enough to hopefully avoid the noise, then they become your new neighbours.
WA set back is 1.5km but the push is to drop it to 1km. Victoria has just dropped theirs from 2km to 1km because they need thousands of them.
At 1.5km between towers, the coverage can be enormous. The Collgar Wind Farm 25km south east of Merredin has 111 towers covering a land envelope of 18,000 ha. The visual area is far larger.
The challenge for wind farm developers is to find sufficient space between farmhouses and remain close to an existing heavy duty power line.
The latest proposal in WA is for a new one to be situated Northeast of Hyden on the 132 kV Kondinin to Bounty Power Line which followed the recent opening of the 51 turbine Dandaragan Wind Farm.
Notice how these are all going up in safe rural electorates. In the case of the Dandaragan wind farm, the community were bought off with an annual payment of $50,000 a year. I hope it was indexed.
As you read this farmers in windy areas are being door-knocked by people with white shoes. Sign here and we will give you enough to cover the repayments on a new ute for three lots of leases on just 10m2 of your land.
This might be good for the neighbour who wants a new Hilux, but not so good for the neighbours.
The world’s biggest towers at 7MW, costing upward of $10m each, would command a fee of up to $50,000 a year as a land lease, but most towers are in the smaller 1MW- 2MW range and would pay between $6,000 – 10,000pa.
A nice little earner for the farm sitting on top of the escarpment, not so good for the neighbours in the gully who will miss out on a turbine or three to help pay the school fees for the kids and grandkids.
One hopes that those who sign the leases read the fine print and that there is some form of bond scheme in place for pulling them down when we get sick of the rising power bills that come with the free wind energy and a courageous government gets smart and builds a nuclear power station in Collie.
Note to those being door-knocked to have a chat to a lawyer who specialises in wind farm lease contracts before signing anything. There are some very unfair deals being offered around.
The WA and federal government is set to sign off on anything between 200 and 400 towers to cover the replacement of the two coal fired power stations, which means Western Australia’s beautiful landscape is going to be a lot less appealing to locals and internationals alike and our power will become a lot more expensive and a lot less reliable. Not a good outcome.
