Green power proposal in the wind

Hunter Valley Town & Country
Monday 16/7/2007 Page: 6

Vacy is a long way from the windy landscape of Holland but it is hoped two tried-and-tested wind turbines from the land of windmills will put the tiny village on the map in terms of the generation of clean, green power. Paterson-based company Green Power has been given the go ahead by Dungog Shire to erect two 45m wind turbines, with rotor diameters of 31 in, on a small knoll half way up the western side of Mount George, 250m below Eaglereach Resort, at Vacy.

It is hoped the power generated by the wind turbines will be fed into the regular grid to be on-sold to customers throughout the region. "The thinking is that these two (wind turbines) will be the first of several," Green Power's director Allen Dunlop said. "The idea is not to have a bank of turbines along a ridge but one or two here and there. "There's plenty of real estate between here and the Great Dividing Range" Mr Dunlop said the wind turbines, which had already spent 15 years generating power in Holland, were far from outdated. "In Holland they are everywhere," Mr Dunlop said. "These were sold not because they were outdated but because (the owner) moved to a bigger capacity." The NSW wind atlas identifies the area around Vacy as having an average annual wind speed of about 6.5m a second.

Therefore, it is estimated the wind turbines will generate about 1100 megawatt hours of green power a year - enough to run 185 average households and reduce the amount of green house gases by 1160 tonnes a year. The wind turbines will be erected on a property owned by Mr Dunlop and run as a beef farm by his daughter. Green Power has secured a connection agreement with Country Energy but is yet to sign a power purchase agreement, which must be done before construction work can begin, to allow the power to be on-sold to customers. Mr Dunlop is using the project as a "test case" and, if it proves successful, he will link with Green Power's parent company, Power Serve, to expand the generation of clean power throughout the region.