TasWind King Island Wind Farm

This page attempts to give the facts about the proposed wind farm and to correct some of the misinformation that has been published in various places.

Near my home, in Mid North South Australia and the towns Snowtown, Hallett and Waterloo, is a triangle of land, about 80km on each side, not greatly larger than King Island, in which there are 279 operating utility-scale wind turbines, with 90 more under construction, spread over seven wind farms. This comprises about half the wind power in South Australia and near a quarter of the wind power in Australia. In and near this area there are, at most, five or ten people who are both strongly opposed to wind turbines and vocal; the vast majority of the local people are almost oblivious to the turbines. The most notable exceptions would be those many, but non-vocal, people who have benefited from the wind farms.

Written 2013/04/18, modified 2013/08/30
Contact: email daveclarkecb@yahoo.com (David Clarke)

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This is a work in progress

I, David Clarke, the author of these pages, have no financial connection to any wind farm proponents.

Where further evidence is needed to support statements I have made on this page I have provided links.

First corrections of misinformation

The King Island Courier, 10th April, page 5, printed an article about a meeting of the No TasWind Farm Group.

At the meeting the proposed 199 turbine Ceres Project on Yorke Peninsula (YP) was used as a negative example of a wind farm. It was claimed that the people of YP will only get $150 000 each year from the Ceres Project. This is just the community fund and does not include something like $15 000 to the hosting landowners each year for each turbine, so, not counting spin-offs like jobs, accommodation spending, work for local contractors, etc., there will be more than $3 million going to the YP community each year.

It is true that there is a very negative and vocal group around the Ceres proposal, but if one looks at the wind farms to the south (Wattle Point) and north (Snowtown), there has been no negativity; and there was no negativity when the Clements Gap Wind Farm was built 15km south of my home.

Land values

Prices of houses sold at Edithburgh since 2004


Data from realestate.com.au Edithburgh is 2.6km from the nearest turbines of the Wattle Point Wind Farm, completed in 2005. No sign of declining property values here.

At the same meeting there was a suggestion that land values would fall. There is neglible evidence that wind farms harm property values in the long term.

Bird tourism

On 2013/04/24 the Courier ran an article on Bird Tourism. Much has been written about birds and wind turbines; on this page I will confine myself to one point.

In an effort to show, by example, that wind turbines do much more good than harm for birds – by reducing greenhouse gas production and therefore slowing climate change – the UK Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB) plans to build a big wind turbine at its headquarters.

This section added 2013/08/30

King Island Wind Farm – The Debate

Kim George, an opponent of the proposed wind farm created a Facebook site with the title above.

The 'About' statement of the Facebook site states "Everyone, including Hydro Tasmania, is welcome to post relevant information here to share with King Islanders to help them make an informed decision." Mr George claims to do his best to be neutral in his administration of the site.

Yet Mr George, who I believe lives in Belgium, has banned several pro-wind power people (including me) from posting on the site. The justification that he gave was that these people were not King-Islanders and the debate was aimed to be just for the locals.

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