South Australia leads with zoning for wind farms: Michael Vawser inspires UK firm's first projects in 2002

South Australia's planning guidelines in 2002 led the way in allowing wind farms to be built on rural-zoned land.

South Australia was the first Australian state to introduce planning guidelines in 2002 for building wind farms on all rural-zoned land. It also offered payroll tax rebates for large renewable energy schemes.

But the commercial thrust for wind farms in South Australia started in 1999 through Adelaide’s Michael Vawser who was based in Bristol UK with a new company called Wind Prospect.

He convinced Wind Prospect to look at wind farms for South Australia that in 2003 only had one 0.15 MW wind turbine in Coober Pedy although, being near the roaring 40s, the state had high-quality wind to exploit.

From a close study of maps and South Australia’s then-advanced online land-ownership database, Vawser met land owners and signed up suitable sites for wind farms.

Despite John Howard federal government’s Renewable Energy Target (requiring electricity retailers to source some energy from renewables), Wind Prospect was still taking a gamble when it went ahead with two wind farm projects at Carunda in the south east (46 megawatts from 23 turbines) and Mount Millar on Eyre Peninsula (70MW from 35 turbines).

With a rigorous approach, born out of strict UK conservation laws, Wind Prospect had a 100% success rate in getting projects approved. It was central to 13 South Australian wind farms being approved, mostly around the mid north.

Wind Prospect has used the success of its South Australian projects to fund ventures interstates, while keeping Adelaide as its base.