The National Wind Farm Commissioner, Andrew Dyer. Credit:Eddie Jim The National Wind Farm Commissioner's three-year term – which began in late 2015 with $2 million funding – followed a Senate inquiry prompted in part by efforts of a few anti-wind turbine groups. Fears by supporters of renewable energy that the commission may have spurred an uptick in opposition to wind farms have largely been allayed, with the role now seen as helping developers understand and respond better to community concerns. Simon Chapman, whose upcoming book, Wind turbine syndrome: A communicated disease, describes the number of complaints as "desultory", said opposition to the industry from the cross-bench senators had backfired. "It's hard to think of a larger own-goal than the efforts of the four horsemen of the wind farm apocalypse - former senators John Madigan, Bob Day, Nick Xenophon and current senator David Leyonhjelm – to have done the ground work to establish a complaint commission and then found the queue of complainants almost empty," Dr Chapman, a professor emeritus in public health at Sydney University, said.

Many more wind turbines are on the way. "Moreover, this will have saved their much-loathed wind farm companies many millions of dollars by setting up an independent complaint investigating body, which did all the investigative work they would have had to pay for." Fairfax Media sought comment from the Waubra Foundation, a group initially set up to oppose a wind farm near Ballarat that has continued to campaign against the industry. Illustration: Matt Golding Booming industry

Fairfax Media understands that some complaints originated from cases where landholders had expectations of hosting turbines and subsequently were denied that chance due to factors beyond their control. A number of complaints citing a wind farm as at fault for a particular issue were resolved after the root cause of the problem was found to be something completely different. These complaints ranged from health-related matters through to poor television reception. While there are about 2180 wind turbines now operating in Australia, that number could almost triple if the 67 wind farms – with 3800 turbines all up – in the development pipeline proceed to construction. Less than half of those proposed wind farms have drawn objections. Of 85 complaints covering 30 projects, 65 have been resolved, Mr Dyer said. "We have learned a great deal from both our complaint handling activities and stakeholder consultations," he said. "Many of our recommendations have been or are in the process of being adopted by industry and government."

Noise issues About half the complaints for existing wind farms involve noise and annoyance, with 38 per cent also citing health concerns. Mr Dyer's annual report noted health complaints have included sleep disturbance, high blood pressure and even diabetes. Audible and low-frequency noise including infrasound from turbines are cited as the cause.



These complaints to his office so far "have provided only anecdotal evidence regarding stated health issues and causality", making it "difficult to confirm" ailments were "a direct result of the wind farm's operations", the report said. "We have always known [wind turbine syndrome] was a non-disease," Dr Chapman said. "The real tragedy is how much this political pantomime of three senate enquiries, a commission and a dedicated funding pot from the [National Health and Medical Research Council] has delayed the roll-out of clean wind energy," he said. "Denmark, much smaller than Tasmania, has many more turbines than all of Australia."

'Great decision' Kane Thornton, chief executive of the Clean Energy Council, said the wind industry had been concerned the commissioner's role could have been filled by someone "far from objective".



Instead, the creation of a commissioner had turned out to be a positive move, with the industry able to glean a lot from Mr Dyer's visits to more than two dozen wind farms.



Mr Dyer's appointment "was a real great decision", Mr Thornton said. "We'd be happy for his role to continue."



One possibility would be to expand the role to include large-scale solar farms, which are increasing in number, and can prompt similar issues for landholders and communities as wind farms, he said. Spreading them out Mr Dyer, however, did note governments may need to consider ways to avoid excessive concentration of wind farms in any one area.



"To date, location and scale of wind farms has been proponent-led and primarily driven by transmission access," he said. Western Victoria, for instance, is a favoured region for developers given good wind resources and the proximity to transmission lines built to link the Portland aluminium smelter with La Trobe's coal-fired power plants.

Loading (See map of western Victoria below showing operating wind farms [red], approved wind farms [yellow] and proposed projects [blue]. Wind farms unlike to proceed are shown in green.) "The power system of the future may well need to be 're-wired' to optimally support the new sources of generation, such as wind and solar," he said, noting north-western Victoria would be one region that could benefit.