I’ve also been amazed at the number of farmers in my local area who, with a straight face, tell me that windfarms are bad because they change the environment. This despite the majority of them wanting to be able to bulldoze tracks on their properties, or dump their rubbish in a gully “down the back”.

Anyway – I’m all worked up and wanted to get the other side of the story out there. So here goes…

The dual proposals to site windfarms on the ridgeline east of Waipara has stirred up a hornets nest of discontent that has sadly boiled over into ugliness. As a Waipara resident with one of the better views of the Mt Cass ridgeline, a regular habit of visiting Mt Cass itself and someone with an interest in the conflicting issues around economic development and environmental impacts, I wanted to give one resident’s views on the plan.

First some context. We live in a country with increasing electricity demands and various pressures upon new electricity generation – large scale hydro has proven difficult in recent years, New Zealand has an aversion to nuclear power and fossil fuelled plants will continue to be problematic from both a supply and impact perspective. While next generation renewables like wave and tidal power sound attractive – they are highly experimental and, at this stage at least, highly expensive on a per KwH basis.Given all of this, our individual electricity use demands an increase in the aggregate electricity supply in as benign a way as possible – and this is where windfarms come in.

At first view it would seem that the ability to generate electricity without affecting the existing ability of the land to generate economic wealth is a positive one. Couple this with the fact that wind power is as close as possible to zero-emission as we’re likely to get and the stage is set for a fait accompli. Or so it would seem.

Out of this seemingly win/win situation comes a tornado of objection – most of which seems to pivot on the impacts on nearby residents of the proposals. These are mainly focused on noise or the perceived economic and visual impacts. Of course a more cynical person would suggest it a little churlish for the anyone living in a highly modified environment such as the Waipara Valley to be against the proposal – development of an agricultural, horticultural and residential nature has, after all, impacted upon the environment more greatly than any windfarm ever will.

Unfortunately it seems that most people’s personal context begins in the present. The attitude seems to go that residents have a God-given right to use the land as they currently do, no matter how far removed that use is from pre-development. When someone comes along however who suggests developing the land for a different, or ancillary use, people tend to rapidly apply the handbrake, no matter how necessary that use is proven to be.

It is understandable that Waipara Valley residents feel aggrieved at the target they perceive Waipara to be for infrastructure projects, and much of the opposition to the windfarms has its genesis in lingering discontent about the Kate Valley Landfill and the process behind that project. The opposition I’ve seen thus far would seem to focus on the economic, noise and visual impacts of the projects. All of these factors are ones that will be looked at under the resource management process and this is more appropriate than fear mongering. From my own perspective, having spent considerable time around (and under!) wind turbines including time spent living near them in Denmark, their noise was never problematic to me. International evidence refutes claims of negative economic impacts from windfarms. And finally, for everyone who declares windfarms have a negative visual impact, there is someone who sees them in a more positive visual light.

But the bottom line is this – we all use electricity and expect a plentiful and on-demand supply. This coupled with the very real benefits of the local community having a degree of control over their own electricity supply, leave me in no doubt that the proposals are a net positive for the local, and wider, community.

I downloaded and installed the application (which is kind of nice in its design and all) but I fail to see how it differs to a traditional power mode control panel. I really hope Edison isn’t another case of greenwash but I suspect it might just be……

The theory goes like this;

• Transmission of energy to a data centre located close to use = mucho expensive
• Transmission of data via fibre from location of plentiful renewable energy = more affordable

It’s all about leveraging virtualization and smart cloud monitoring software to switch in and out individual centres depending on their current energy availability status.

Cool…..

Director of Neptune Energy, Chris Bathurst says;

When we first started this people said it wasn’t technically possible. Then they said the fishermen would never allow it.

Bathurst’s calculations suggest there is enough tidal movement in Cook Strait to generate 12GW of power, more than one-and-a-half times New Zealand’s present generation capacity.

That’s a pretty compelling figure.

So I was quite enamoured by the NZ herald article that states

that New Zealand was one of just a handful of places identified worldwide that was well placed to become carbon-neutral for transport, given advances in biofuel technology…..New Zealand could be a world leader in the field and was already getting international attention because it could be self-sufficient given the ratio of vehicles to land available.

Fantastic, love the grand vision, why not!…Then I thought about it, and then I found some problems with this approach.

1. we need a government who has the long term interests of the nation at heart, not the next re-election, this is after all a 40 year plan!!
2. If we are the only country that can do this doesn’t that mean other more powerful / innovative countries will solve the oil / transportation issue in their own way & we end up with an orphan technology? (Cuba anyone?)
3. 25 yrs @ $ 2-3 billion a year…. To be honest if we couldn’t invent something better technically, sooner and with a better NPV return and that didn’t rely on combustion to create energy with $100 -150 billion then we should be shot.

I do applaud the vision though is sincerely hope that one little nation can, & will be a leader in alternate energies for our planets sake as well as for our economy.

So, if we were serious about this kind of nationwide transformation, and we had loads of cash, what do you folks think NZ could do? What is your grand vision?

News this morning that Windflow Technology reports an improved six month position. They’re still running at a loss but less so than in previous periods. Good things on the horizon include;

• Orders for 30 turbines for the Te Rere Hau wind farm near Palmerston North. This brings to 44 the number of turbines either in production, or scheduled for production. Five have already been installed at Te Rere.
• Currently bidding to supply the proposed Mt Cass wind farm in North Canterbury which will have 80 turbines
• In the running to supply two turbines to a Hawaiian project.

Keep up the good work Windflow

Yet another high-flying Silicon Valley entrepreneur is planning to capitalize on the growing popularity of “green” technology, and to do it, he’s tapping the wisdom of crowds as well as their cash.

Steve Newcomb, a co-founder of search startup Powerset, is in the early stages of launching a venture-capital fund that would accept green investments as low as $100, with a maximum investment of $1,000.

Cool. I posted yesterday about cleantech in general and NZ Windfarms lts in particular. I got a reply which indicated some stumbling blocks for cleantech investment, namely poor investment targets and limited ROI. While a crowdsourced VC targeting cleantech won’t solve these issues per se, it will give cleantech startups the impetus to become more realistic and chase both the green nirvana and business viability.

Strange then that WindfarmsNZ share price has slumped so markedly of late. Especially so given the good performance just released. Windfarms is poised to leverage both gains made by its sister company Windflow New Zealand, and also to make significant gains from the coming to prominence of clean and renewable electricity generation sources.

Diversity’s advice would be to buy on these ones (but bear in mind that Diversity’s advice comes cheap (well free) with all care but nix responsibility!)