The process of developing a wind farm involves many steps and a wide range of people, consultants and organisations. This article is an overview which introduces other more detailed articles.
Developing a community wind farm is a process of investigating and firming up unknowns like environmental impacts and costs. If you have a basic financial model or business case this will be constantly revisited as you learn more about your proposed project. Crucially to the community model, all development activities will run in parallel to community engagement activities.
The stages of wind farm development, can be described as
- Site selection and pre-feasibility
- Wind monitoring
- Feasibility
- Detailed assessment
- Planning application
One you have been awarded a planning permit for the wind farm, development activities will give way to fund raising and construction activities. Of course the community engagement will continue throughout.
Pre-feasibility
The aim of the pre-feasibility phase is to identify a potential wind farm site. In order to do this you will look at some of the important factors like the distance to the electrical grid and the wind resource. You will also need to discuss your proposition with landowners to find willing participants in the project. Then, some initial research should help you identify any constraints that make a site unviable, such as environmental sensitivity.
The process usually involves:
- compiling wind data, maps of electrical networks and information about protected land, topography, land titles, and so on
- visiting and assessing potential sites
- a final evaluation, where you select your preferred site.
Wind monitoring
Before you build a wind farm, it’s important to monitor the wind resources at your proposed site. Wind speed is the single most important factor in how much energy a wind farm can produce and therefore determines a project's viability. Gathering good quality, reliable wind data is also essential in presenting a firm business case to your investors and other stakeholders, such as the wind turbine supplier.
It's important to start wind monitoring early in the development process, as you need data for a minimum of one year in order to capture seasonal effects.
Feasibility
The feasibility phase of development predominantly concerns building the business case. It involves estimating total project costs and output, to establish whether your project can repay loans and provide a return to investors. Key inputs to this will be:
- the results of wind monitoring
- initial grid connection costings
- other feasibility investigations that show people it's worth investing in the detailed technical assessments you need for your planning application.
Usually, the feasibility study takes place at the same time as discussions with landowners and other stakeholders. Due to the mounting costs at this stage, before you commit further significant resources you need to sign an Agreement to Lease (or similar contractual undertaking) with the landowner. This will secure your right to use their land for wind farm development.
Detailed assessment and development
The goal of the detailed assessment is to gather enough information about site constraints to satisfy planning authorities that your wind farm meets relevant planning requirements.
To apply for development approval from the relevant planning authority, you will need experts to assess various technical issues concerning the site, such as:
- environmental and heritage impacts
- noise
- visual impacts
- electromagnetic interference
- proximity of flight paths
All the technical inputs from the various expert reports will inform and constrain the wind farm layout and design. Wind farm design tends to be an ongoing process — energy yield models are re-drafted as new site constraints become apparent. Each change affects your business case, so it's important you keep feeding new information into your financial models.
Planning application
Planning approval is permission from a statutory decision-maker (either the local council, state or the federal government) for the change of land use. Planning approvals for community-scale wind farms are usually the responsibility of the local council, with appeals taken to the relevant state government department or tribunal.
It's important to seek planning approval early in the development cycle, because if approval is denied, your project can't go any further. On the other hand, you need to do sufficient feasibility and assessment work so the decision-maker can assess the merit of your project and its compatibility with existing land uses. The trick is to do enough work to get through the planning stage, but not more than that, or you may be wasting money.
You should start talking to the council (or other relevant authority) early in the development process so that you have a clear idea of exactly what hoops you need to jump through to apply for a planning permit.