focusinterview.

Infigen | Woodlawn Windfarm

new england

adam blakester
New England Wind are incredibly excited, and sometimes exhausted, by this opportunity to create our very own New England wind farm. FOCUS caught up with the committee to learn more ...
What is the timeline looking like from 2013 to date of completion? Our priority right now is to nalise the site negotiations. The next step will be wind monitoring and analysis, which in turn will enable us to start building the wind power and nancial models. Once we get to this point we will start fundraising to complete a full technical feasibility study in readiness for planning approvals. In broad terms, and all going really well, we could be starting this study in 1-2 years time and then raising funds to build the wind farm in 3 - 4 years from today. As you can see, it is a very big job. We've done more than $300,000 worth of work on the project to date. While most of this has been done by pro-bono and volunteer contributions, we are very grateful for the funding received from the NSW Ofce of Environment and Heritage, NSW Ofce of Fair Trading, The Earth Welfare Foundation, New England Mutual, Sustainable Living Armidale and Starsh Enterprises. Where to from here? It is really important that we keep building community interest, understanding and support. A community wind farm requires this focus at the same time as doing the technical side of things really well. New England Wind has 848 supporters and had more than 50,000 connections last year though its website, newsletters, Facebook and media. We of course welcome more! So please sign up via our website or Facebook Page. Also, we're negotiating pro-bono legal support to incorporate the Cooperative for the project. Once this is in place, we will be inviting membership. How can the community get involved and support the project? We have seats available on our Wind Farms Tour from Armidale to Canberra by coach from 7 - 10 November. This is a great opportunity to learn rst hand about modern wind farms, plus do some sight seeing and have some fun. We are also seeking interest from volunteers to help out with our new Community Wind Power information centre. This is a very professional mobile exhibit for events, markets and the like. The volunteers will make a real difference to the project and learn a great deal about wind power, renewable energy and community education and engagement. Lastly, New England Wind is registered with New England Mutual's Community Partnership program. We would really appreciate being nominated by current or new members to be their 'community partner'. How can the community nd out more about New England Wind? More details about everything we have spoken about can be found on our website at www.newenglandwind.coop this is also where people can subscribe to our newsletters and become a supporter. Our Facebook Page at www.facebook.com/ NewEnglandWind is where we post more frequent news and people can ask questions and comment on the project. Lastly, we can of course be contacted via our website or by emailing info@newenglandwind.coop Is there anything else you would like to add? Only that we are incredibly excited, and sometimes exhausted, by this opportunity to create our very own New England wind farm. There are several commercial wind farms already approved to be built in the New England, and several more in the pipeline. However the difference about New England Wind is we are the ones creating it, in a way that most benets the community, and so it will be us who owns those benets! Thanks Adam.
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ell us about the New England Wind Committee ... New England Wind is led by a consortium of partners and professionals. Developing a community windfarm has quite a broad range of requirements ~ wind power, engineering, nance, capital raising, business management, research, planning, education and more! The consortium is a multiperson-party approach to better achieve this range of requirements for the project. Stephen Gow has recently joined the consortium. The other members are Dr Chris Blanksby, Elizabeth Gardiner, Patsy Asch, Andy CavanaghDowns, Bar Finch, Paul Cruickshank and Adam Blakester. How will the New England benet from a wind farm? There truly are big benets both for individual shareholders, as well as the wider community. Looking at HepburnWind, which is Australia's rst community wind farm, helps show this. Hepburn's two wind turbines generated 10,000,000 kWH of clean and renewable electricity in their rst year. This is about as much used by 1,300 - 1,500 homes! They are

now providing community grants, which topped $40,000 this year. The project employs four staff and has trained up three dozen core volunteers in areas like project management, nance, communications and engagement. Plus, by owning their electricity infrastructure, they keep tens of millions of dollars circulating in their local economy instead of being paid in electricity bills to national and international companies. New England Wind is likely to be about three-times the size of HepburnWind equal to about half the residential electricity use in the Tablelands. Has there been any further development on the proposed location? Readers may recall that we found out earlier this year that our proposed location of Woodville East proved to be unviable due to the cost of connecting to the current electricity grid. This was very disappointing, to say the least especially after several years of work by quite a lot of people. However, New England Wind has always had back-up sites. We are in negotiation on a new site right now, which is looking promising; however, these negotiations are sensitive and condential until a successful agreement is reached.