I've been considering the possibility of using energy from wind as part of our 'community power plant'. A lot of people don't like wind turbines, they object to the noise, the flickering and the visual impact issues.

I can't really speak about the first two objections, but personally I really like the way they look. We were driving home from coastal Gippsland the other day, and passed some turbines on the way - and they looked amazing - like elegant white kinetic sculptures.

Anyway, one of the reasons I drew up a 3D model was to get a clearer understanding of the possible impact of turbines if we used them in our neighbourhood. I really liked the idea of them being a kind a entry feature, and a public declaration of a green neighbourhood (because a lot of sustainable features are invisible). So I modeled up a whole line of them along Alexander Parade, with each turbine 26m tall (about a third of the height of the shot tower)


But it's a no-go I think. We could probably live with the noise, located as they are between six lanes of traffic - but the problem is the shadows they would cast on surrounding buildings and private space. Nobody wants a strobe affect all day long. Actually, the shadows would only be a problem in mid winter - but that's bad enough.

Assuming 26m tall is viable - we could locate one or more here on the expressway median, but it probably doesn't make sense for us to do that as part of our neighbourhood project. I imagine that it would also be a massive job to get anything like this past the road and traffic authority - who'd probably have concerns about cars hitting the turbines, or being distracted by them.