South Australia wind farm open for public view after winning infrasound court case

The South Australian wind farm that had to go to the Supreme Court over infrasound concerns is now open for public consultation as it looks to a 2025 start date.

The Palmer wind farm has travelled a long way to get to this point: it was conceived in 2013, but had to fight through a series of health-related objections from a number of local landholders, including former AFL chief executive Gillon McLachlan, to get to the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation (EPBC) process. 

Today, the Tilt Renewables’ project is a shadow of its original proposal in 2019, at least in terms of turbine numbers which are down from 103 turbines to 40.  But because it will use more powerful turbines than those imagined five years ago, the overall capacity is reduced only slightly to 288 MW from 300 MW originally.

These machines will have a maximum tip height of 220m, which is 33 per cent higher than the originally proposed turbines and will be sized at slightly more than 7 MW each, a testament to how far wind turbine technology has come since the wind farm was first proposed. 

These will be the biggest in the Australian grid, but another newly unveiled wind project in Tasmania has proposed turbines at 8 MW.

The South Australia wind farm will be sandwiched between the small towns of Palmer and Tungkillo, and about 50 kilometres east of Adelaide. It will hook into the existing Tungkillo Switching Station, operated by state transmission company ElectraNet, and its footprint is some 5000 hectares smaller. 

Tilt Renewables estimates that construction will start in late 2025 and be finished in late 2027-mid 2028, by which time the state government hopes to reach its accelerated target of 100 per cent “net” renewables.

Infrasound unsubstantiated, court said

The Palmer project ran into early difficulties with its prospective neighbours, with an absentee homeowner taking his bid to cancel the development right to the Supreme Court of South Australia on the grounds that it might damage nearby residents’ health. 

The claim, by one of the original objectors Stirling McGregor, a friend of McLachlan who lived in Melbourne but owned a house about 7km from the closest proposed turbine at the time, was that turbines cause health issues from difficulty sleeping, nausea, cardiac arrhythmia, depression and irritability, vivid and distressing nightmares, ringing in the ears and ear pressure, and headaches.

That bid was rejected in 2019, when a three-judge panel upheld a previous ruling by the Environment, Resources and Development Court (ERD) that health claims that “infrasound” caused by spinning turbines can make people sick were unsubstantiated. 

The court said McGregor’s legal team failed to prove that the ERD Court erred in its judgement. 

“The objectors did not adduce any expert medical opinion that the particular symptoms and experiences described by the deponents were caused by the wind farms in their locality,” the judgment said.

Infrasound has been debunked as a cause of health problems by several studies since then. Last year, a Woolcock Institute study “conclusively” finding it doesn’t make people sick, and two papers from Flinders University found that noises from wind turbines don’t affect sleep any more than traffic sounds. 

There is still an active Facebook group opposing the development, but Tilt Renewables says community briefings over the course of 2023 produced a range of views, some of which it took into account with the final design.

These included support for the reduction in turbines and footprint, both opposition to and support for wind and solar generally in the region, concerns about the impact of construction on locals, and queries about benefit sharing initiatives.

The feedback, which includes views from the local Indigenous Peramangk People, saw the removal of three turbines and layout changes, and drop-in sessions for the community to speak to visual and acoustic specialists to discuss how Tilt will deal with noise and visual concerns from the turbines.

One issue that remains unresolved is the wind farm’s impact on the nearby River Murray International Dark Sky Reserve, which is about 50km away.