Global Power Generation Australia propose large wind farm for south of Oberon

Covering an area of 3,900 hectares, it will be located on either side of Abercrombie Road at the far south of the shire, just before the descent to the Abercrombie River.

The land is currently used for grazing and will still be available for that purpose once construction has finished.

The project is being proposed by Global Power Generation Australia, who are part of the international Naturgy group and currently operates wind farms at Berrybank in Victoria and Crookwell in NSW as well as two installations in Chile.

The proposed site will have up to 47 towers - each 240 metres tall at the upper blade tip - and will generate up to 290 megawatts of power.

The Environmental Impact Statement will be released during August 2022 with construction expected to commence in mid-2023. The wind farm is expected to be operational in 2025.

There are always concerns about projects like this and GPG seem determined to address those concerns. Two public meetings were held at Black Springs Community Hall on July 28 and 29 and further meetings will be held as the project progresses.

One concern for Oberon residents is the transport of the 65 metre blades through the town. This will involve 141 movements of very long loads, but transport companies from around the world have moved a lot of these blades so getting the blades up the hillclimb between O'Connell and Oberon will be a challenge but not anything that hasn't been done before.

The GPG site about the Paling Farms Wind Farm can be found here.

Wind farms always manage to generate controversy and objections. Many of the objections are not based on reality so it seems important to address them at this early stage of the project.

The two big health risks that are usually raised are noise and vibration.

The vibration one is easy to address because any significant vibration would greatly reduce the life of the bearings in the turbines so a lot of work is done to make the operation run very smoothly.

As for noise, GPG have done an auditory study and the maximum volume would be about 35 decibels on Abercrombie Road in the middle of the site.

Sound at this level presents no danger and is at a level of a quiet room; a person whispering; the sound of rustling leaves or a silent library.

Professor Simon Chapman from the University of Sydney has spent a lot of time looking at the possible health impact of wind farms and you can read some of his thought here.

One criticism of wind farms is that the blades can't be recycled and have to be buried or dumped in the ocean, thus making the claim of clean energy false.

A photograph of blades being buried has been circulating on the internet for several years, but the truth is that even blades from the earliest wind farms can be recycled into things like a substitute for sand in concrete.

The blades used today are constructed of different materials and recycling is not really an issue.

This is the big objection but it turns out to be a worry but not a big one.

A study done in Canada looked at the sorts of human activities that kill birds and came up with some figures.

The authors estimated that bird deaths by collision with wind farm blades was about 13,000 per year. This sounds like a lot but should be compared with over 79 million killed by feral cats and almost 55 million killed by domestic cats (See the figures here).

Major bird welfare groups such as the Audibon Society in the USA admit that bird deaths are a problem but they see climate change as a much bigger threat, and wind farms address that problem.