Australia’s first and largest offshore wind farm, Star of the South, off the Victoria coast, has released three proposed easements for underground cables through farmland in South Gippsland.
The cable routes would provide options for connecting the offshore wind farm to the national electricity grid.
The $10 billion wind farm would comprise approximately 250 turbines in the ocean off the Victorian coast and up to 80 kilometres of underground cabling to the Latrobe Valley.
Substations would also be built along the cable route.
If approved, the 2000-megawatt (MW) wind farm would produce 18 per cent of Victoria’s electricity needs, enough power to service 1.2 million homes.
ABC News reports that in a letter to be sent to affected landholders next week, the company outlines where the three potential easements would come ashore and the private property that would be affected.
Landholders, anxious about being reasonably compensated, met last month to discuss their concerns about the disruption to their farm businesses.
ABC News reports many of them were involved in a bitter battle with National Grid more than a decade ago, when large overhead pylons were built on their farms to allow for the Victoria–Tasmania power connector, Basslink.
“That’s partly why we decided to put our cable underground and from day one we have certainly tried to be very transparent,” Star of the South chief development officer Erin Coldham told ABC News.
One proposed easement brings the cable to land at McGaurans Beach, south of Sale, and follows a 30-metre-wide easement used by Basslink.
The other two suggested cable routes start at nearby Reeves Beach.
“We’ve had to look for relatively flat terrain and we’ve also looked at the Old Rosedale Road as a corridor,” Ms Coldham said.
“But we’ve got more work to do to narrow that down and come to a preferred option.”
The company has met with about 50 affected landholders, and said compensation offers would be fair and reasonable.
Farmers would be compensated for land value, lost production, and the cost of returning the land to its original condition once the cable has been laid.
Landholders’ legal and surveying costs would also be covered, to a degree.
“We are obviously looking to have negotiations with individuals but based on a fair and equitable formula across the board,” Ms Coldham said.
Landholders would retain ownership of the easement but would not be allowed to build anything, stockpile materials, or plant trees on the land.
Star of the South has referred the wind farm project to the Victorian Minister for Planning to consider an Environmental Effects Statement and to the Federal Minister for Environment, under the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act.
The company has been monitoring wave and wind conditions since November 2019.
Acoustic monitoring equipment has been placed on the sea floor to record the sounds of marine mammals including dolphins and seals.
Birds are being tagged to better understand whether the proposed turbines would disrupt their flight paths.
A large ship out of Lakes Entrance was used to map the seabed and measure water depths down to 80 metres to identify any buried obstacles including shipwrecks and old cables.
The company has signed a lease to open a project office in the main street of Yarram, and is inviting local residents to join a community advisory group for the project.
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One Response
Great to see Star of The South running their cables underground. Could this be the start of a whole new wave of thinking by the electricity sector.?? I have long advocated to state and federal governments, and again most recently following the bush fires and floods, that as part of our national infrastructure planning and development, Australia should commit to placing all new power infrastructure underground, together with a programme to progressively place all existing electricity transmission infrastructure underground. To me it makes good sense. I have asked that the NSW planning department do a study of the cost of continual replacement of the same power infrastructure over the years, due to fire and floods, versus the one time cost of placing the same infrastructure underground. We have progressive thinkers like Star of The South and a company in The Northern Territory planning to go underground, the latter with aims to send solar power undersea to Singapore. The technology has been there for years – it just needs some bureaucrats to get their heads out of their “always done it this way” boxes.