community wind

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

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

Community Owned Wind turbines have to potential to generate clean renewable electricity and offset a large portion of the greenhouse emissions currently produced by burning non-renewable brown coal. In a community-owned wind project, local people are responsible for ownership and decision making.  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.  With six 2MW turbines we could supply all of the household electricity needs of the Mount Alexander Shire.

the Benefits of community-owned wind power

  • Clean, renewable energy

  • Supplying a significant portion of the electricity needs of our shire

  • Community ownership and control

  • Healthy returns on investment

  • New sources of community funding

  • Local jobs & skills

  • Community action on climate change

  • Community scale: 1-6 turbines

the Process

Community-driven, community-controlled.

This project was initiated by a group of community volunteers in 2007 who were excited about the potential of the project to bring many benefits to the community.

Now we want to know what you think of the idea! 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.