Home	The Vision	The Process	The Benefits	Why Wind Power	Get Involved	More Info

Imagine supplying half the houses in our shire with electricity, plus raising money for local projects and local shareholders while cutting carbon emissions!

A Community Owned Wind Farm will feed clean renewable electricity back into the grid and offset a large portion of the greenhouse emissions currently produced by burning non-renewable brown coal. Local people will be responsible for ownership and control of the wind farm and there will be opportunities for all Shire residents to have a financial and decision-making stake in the project if they wish to.

the Vision

Community-owned clean, renewable energy that brings income and environmental benefit to our community.

We expect that a viable community wind farm in our shire would consist of at least three 2 megawatt (MW) turbines, that would produce up to 6 MW of electricity. This would power over 3,000 local homes, meeting 50% of the shire’s household electricity needs.  It would reduce our Shire’s annual greenhouse emissions by 18,000 tonnes, reducing emissions from electricity generation for the shire by 15%.  This emission reduction would be equivalent to taking over 4,000 cars off the road.

the Process

Community-drive, community-controlled.

This project was initiated by a group of community volunteers in 2007, we are obviously very excited about the potential and benefits of the project.  Now we want to know what you think. Over the coming weeks and months we will be rolling out forums, workshops, stalls, info nights and asking all of you to come along to voice your visions (and concerns) so that together we can create a project that is going to ‘fit’ our community and bring us the benefits we want to see.  But we won’t know what this project looks like till you help us define it!

Based on community input, MASG will work to ensure that the ownership model for our Wind Park is the most suitable for our community. We will draw on the experiences of the Hepburn Wind Co-Operative who have successfully developed Australia’s first community owned wind farm in Daylesford. The Hepburn Project replicates successful models that have been used to develop wind parks in Denmark, Germany, Britain and Canada.

the Benefits of community-owned wind power

A Community Owned Wind Park will:

• reduce greenhouse gas emissions
• allow local people to own and be responsible for part of the energy supply in their local community
• allow local people to share in the financial benefits resulting from the generation of their own electricity – keeping profits within the community
• provide local jobs and business opportunities both during the construction phase and also with on-going maintenance.

Welcome Jarra: new Community Wind Project Coordinator

Jarra has been employed to help drive the project forward and to facilitate broad community involvement in making a clean energy future a reality for our shire. Jarra has a lot of experience working with, advocating for and writing about community-owned renewable energy projects from all over the world – from cow-dung biogas in India to farmer-owned wind turbines in Minnesota, USA.  She has a background in community organising as well as a bachelor of Development Studies and honors in Local Responses to Climate Change.

Why Wind Power?

Wind power investment is growing consistently at 30% per annum worldwide as people turn towards clean, safe and reliable forms of energy generation based on renewables like solar and wind power. Last year nearly half of all new electricity energy generation installed globally used renewable energy. Denmark produces over 20% of its electricity from wind power and over 150,000 families belong to 2,100 wind turbine cooperatives, which have installed 86% of all the wind turbines in Denmark. In July this year Australia’s first community owned wind farm, Hepburn Wind, commenced generating power in Daylesford, 50 km from Castlemaine.

For over eighteen months MASG has been researching renewable energy options that will provide the most significant reductions in greenhouse gas emissions to put our shire on a path towards being a truly sustainable community. We have been advocating the installation of solar photo voltaic (PV) systems for the direct generation of electricity as well as solar hot water systems.

Our research has highlighted that wind is a very important source of renewable energy and has a crucial role to play in the generation of large amounts of cost effective clean electricity. The cost of solar PV has fallen significantly in recent years but is still well above the cost of wind power.  Wind is currently the more cost efficient form of renewable energy.  The decline in cost of large scale electricity generation using wind power (compared to other renewable energy technologies) has led to a big increase in investment and growth in the wind power industry.  Wind ‘farms’ are now a common sight in countries such as Germany, United States, Spain, China, India and in parts of Australia.

Why wind is cost effective & environmentally sustainable

The table below shows the cost of electricity and emissions produced for different methods of electricity generation.

Energy Source	Cost (cents/kWh)	Emissions (tonnes CO2/MWh)
Black Coal	3.5	1.0
Brown Coal	3.5	1.3
Gas, peak load	14.0	0.6
Wind (50MW facility)	8.3	0
Solar PV	47.0	0

Source: Diesendorf, M. (2007) Greenhouse Solutions with Sustainable Energy, UNSW Press, p. 355. (Available from MASG)

Please get involved! we can’t do this without you.

Become a member of Mount Alexander Community Wind (online soon, or at the office)

Join our enews (by emailing us)

Make a donation (online soon, or at the office)

Come on a Wind Farm Tour!

MASG will organise regular tours to Hepburn Wind. Tour dates and times will be posted on the MASG Notice Board, in the eNews and on this website.

Next Wind Farm Tour: Sunday 12 February 2012. Please email us to register.