Landowner-designed wind farm and huge battery in Tasmania snags major project status

A new landowner-led wind farm and battery proposal in central Tasmania is aiming to do community benefits a little differently, targeting individuals’ back pockets and by ensuring the visual impact is as low as possible. 

Six landowners are involved in planning the 56-turbine, 350 megawatt (MW) Cellars Hill wind farm and a massive 600 MW/ 2400 MWh battery, which on Wednesday secured major project status from the Tasmanian government. 

The project – costed by the developers at “in excess of” $1 billion and the government at $1.5 billion – will sit across an existing 220kV transmission line with turbines on both farmland and in private and state-owned plantations. If state and federal approvals go to plan, construction will start in 2027 and operations by 2030. 

The streamlined major project status is designed for large, capital-heavy projects like Cellars Hill, said Tasmanian planning minister Felix Ellis in a statement.

“In our small state, big projects are a gamechanger. No one can argue with the jobs and opportunities created by our first Major Project declaration – the Bridgewater Bridge,” he said.

“Wind farms are the majority of major projects being assessed currently by the Tasmanian Planning Commission, with 4 large scale wind generation projects around the state choosing this pathway.

“Our government wants to see large renewable energy developments get out of the ground faster and simpler.”

The 8,460 hectare Cellars Hill site sits in the proposed Central Highlands renewable energy zone (REZ). Already in the area is the existing Cattle Hill wind farm. Ark Energy has development approval for its 300 MW St Patricks Plains farm and Goldwind has just sent its 450 MW Bashan project into the federal approvals process.

Aside from wind, Neoen has development approval for a 140MW, two hour battery in Palmerston, and the 250MW Weasel solar farm is planned for 9km outside Bothwell. 

The solar development is backed by one of the key landowners behind Cellars Hill, Peter Downie who co-developed the Cattle Hill wind farm and developer TasRex. 

Community-led design

The Cellars Hill design, both of the turbine layout and the community benefits, is all due to deep landowner involvement, says Andrew Clark from developer Alternate Path. 

It’s resulted in a project design that is sympathetic to local residents – in other words, the landowners’ longterm neighbours. 

Other details to make the wind farm fit more snugly with community expectations include shrinking the original design and ensuring a 10km set back from Bothwell, 7km from Osterley and 15km from Ouse, in order to reduce sightlines as much as possible. 

And they’re planning to establish from scratch a behind-the-meter industrial hub at Bothwell, in the hope this will create jobs for the community and reinvigorate the town. 

“This is part of a much broader vision we had for bringing behind-the-meter projects, so the power can be used locally whether that be potential data centres, sustainable fuel projects, or timber processing.”

Clark says they’re currently talking to plasma fertiliser maker PlasmaLeap, a company that has gone from pre-commercial to pre-sales in two years, efuels maker HIF Global, data centres, and timber waste and processing companies. 

“We’ve got the land, and what we’ll be doing as part of it is developing the core infrastructure for the region. But a lot of the types of projects we’re talking about don’t need massive supporting industry around them, they need land and a warehouse and a footprint,” he says.

Back pocket benefits

Instead of drawing up a broader community benefits scheme, all of the social licence funding will go to residents living within 12km of the project. They will receive an annual $1,000 energy bill rebate for the life of the project. 

Engie pioneered energy bill benefits of this size at its The Plains energy park near Hay, in New South Wales (NSW), but tied the rebate to its in-house retailer. The Cellars Hill rebate will be managed by the Central Highlands Shire council so it’s untied to any retailer. 

The council is keen to pool community benefits funding from the mass of projects proposed for the REZ. 

But that’s a move which in other parts of Australia is worrying some developers.

NSW’s community benefits guideline, released in November, included a strong recommendation for councils to manage at least 85 per cent of any scheme. 

Although some developers, such as Someva Renewables and Squadron Energy, are already working to the brief which had been telegraphed as a possible requirement. 

But others who declined to be named because they had projects under consideration in the state, queried whether councils could always be trusted not to put the cash into operational budgets.

Such a set up must come with guardrails to ensure complete transparency to show where the money is going – but also who it’s come from, said Clean Energy Council policy director Nick Aberle and Stride Renewables partner Amy Kean at the time.

In Tasmania’s Central Highlands, Clark says the council is very supportive of their ideas around community benefits.

Given the Weasel solar farm is also part of the Downie-Alternate Path portfolio and will offer a more usual community benefits fund, they’re pushing for a trust structure that ringfences developer monies while offering the council some discretion on how it’s used.

Employing eagle tech 

Given Downie’s involvement in the Cattle Hill wind farm, which was the first to introduce the Identiflight technology to spot and halt turbines when endangered Tasmanian wedge-tailed eagles are in the air, so the Cellars Hill project will also include the tech. 

The project design includes 1km exclusion buffers around known eagle nests.

Clark says the Cellars Hill proposal is separated from Goldwind’s Cattle Hill and Bashan sites so they’ve not have any queries relating to the cumulative effects of multiple wind farms in one area.

Further, given the height of modern turbines, Clark says they’re less concerned about bird strikes now during operation than habitat disturbance during construction. 

“Other than the eagles, the birds that we will have [in the area] really will not fly above the canopy. And as turbines are getting higher they don’t get to the heights, it’s more during construction that we need to be aware of our design,” he says. 

“And the other thing with the eagles is the way we’re going to manage the sites. 

“If you minimise site clearing, you minimise changing the behaviours and patterns of the eagles. We understand the patterns of what they’re doing [now]. But if you clear a big patch of trees [and create open plains] you risk changing their behaviour.”