Hobart windmills mean for ugly big time

So I'm sitting here with a cold, trying not to think about work and how useless I am to the place when I am unwell, ideas and opinions are starting to fall out of my head at pace. My letter to the Mercury's editor and whoever else I decide to flick it to. Probably a little long-winded for the Merc, but we'll see.

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The windmills on the Marine Board building are set to start spinning once again. It seems folks are at extremes of this debate. Either you are all for them - right on, save the trees and all that - or else you live in fear of it raining gigantic steak knives the next time you are out to dinner or a drink on a windy Hobart night.

It's interesting too, to hear the view of the proponent (Mr Kirke) in last Monday's Mercury, viz. more windmills on more buildings, with perhaps the Hydro building next on the list. Get off it, how much uglier do you want to make the most beautiful city in Australia? I'd love to see Alderman Sexton enter this debate with a little more vision and vigour.

Hobart could surely lead the world in small scale renewables, but destroying roof-lines and vistas is in my opinion, not the way to do it. Retrofitting wind turbines, solar panels and the like to existing structures for marginal power generation is a really inefficient use of resources. Such installations tend to be less than ideal no matter how good the hardware. The only thing making them viable (speaking as a rebate recipient myself) is the government handouts. Which were, as I recall, about giving a new industry a leg up as much as they were about greenwash.

To put forward an alternative. Perhaps if land could be set aside by the council for community alternative energy parks, with small plots tied to ratepayers' existing residential land titles. Such a place, surely, could generate more electricity for less money in a concentrated and ideal spot. My one kilowatt system could have become two or three just through the economies of scale of big grid-tie inverters, bulk purchases and a good location.

HCC has already shown its willingness to think forward and invest, as an example, just look at the pilot methane recovery plant at the Hobart tip. I ask them and in particular Ald Sexton, to lead the community again now. Those of us concerned about where power is being generated and how, will contribute to such a project and either offset our rates or power bills with what is generated.

To me, it seems a way to get the warm fuzzy feeling of green orthodoxy without inciting the neighbors to violence through shade. As for the Marine board building wind mills? Keep them, we're getting used to them now, they can be our reminder of the evils of tokenism.

Sincerely
Ian Mackintosh, Deep Bay