Farmers are vowing to lock their gates against a “once-in-a-generation” infrastructure project connecting wind and solar farms to energy customers in New South Wales and Victoria.
Energy provider Transgrid has unveiled its preferred route for about 200km of the high-voltage VNI West transmission lines through farmland in southern NSW.
The route will connect Victoria’s transmission network, and the solar and wind projects that feed power into it, to NSW’s network, where dozens of renewables projects are in early stages of planning, before feeding that power to regional towns and cities on both sides of the border.
At one end of the VNI West route 60km north of Jerilderie, a group of farmers that has signed up to host one of Australia’s largest onshore wind farms is welcoming the money and new jobs the transmission line will bring.
At the other end of the line near the Victorian border, farmers are furious, saying VNI West will cut through their properties and affect their livelihoods.
Renewables bring extra income
Peter Robertson is one of eight farmers who has committed to hosting the Yanco Delta wind project on his merino sheep property.
The project received NSW government approval in December and will include 208 wind turbines delivering up to 1.5GW of electricity.
It has promised to bring 300 new jobs to the farming region during its construction phase and 30 ongoing jobs during operation.
Belgian project developer ViRYA Energy will pay Mr Robertson between $10,000 and $15,000 per wind turbine per year for the life of the project — a vital injection of money the grazier said would keep his farm operational.
“I’m not the largest farmer around the district. It will certainly make a big difference to my bottom line,” he said.
VNI West, which will connect to Yanco Delta, will run along Mr Robertson’s boundary fence, and he had no objections to it.
“They’ve got to build these things [transmission lines] somewhere … I think it’s a very sensible place to put it, being that there’s virtually no population that it’s going to interfere with,” he said.
Farmers vow to ‘stall’ project
Not everyone is happy about VNI West.
Cobramunga grazier and crop grower Simon Ettershank, who farms irrigated crops and sheep on the banks of the Murray River, said the project would face major challenges from his community.
He said he and other community members were discussing “preventing access [to their properties] to Transgrid as much as possible” in an effort to slow the project.
Mr Ettershank said he was shocked to learn the powerline would cleave a path through his high-value irrigation land, camping spots he rents out as part of his business, and an environmental area he had been rehabilitating.
“I pointed out [to Transgrid] these areas I didn’t think were appropriate for huge powerlines to run through … I thought that went pretty well, they took notes of where all these areas were, and then I received the email to say that [VNI West] is pretty much going right through all of that.
“I just could not believe that they did that.”
Transgrid’s preferred route, Option C, runs north from the Victoria-NSW border around the Moulamein township, before travelling east through the Murray River region to the Dinawan substation north of Jerilderie.
Under rules announced by the NSW government in 2022, landholders will receive $200,000 before tax per kilometre of new transmission infrastructure hosted on their land to be paid in $10,000 instalments annually for 20 years.
The total figure is the same as compensation paid to landholders in Victoria, who are paid $200,000 per kilometre over 25 years.
Mr Ettershank said there was no amount of compensation that would persuade him to support the transmission line project.
“We just want to be left alone, to do our thing, do our farming,” he said.
Proper consultation is vital
RE-Alliance national director Andrew Bray said the VNI West project had a “critical role” in Australia’s transition to a net-zero emissions future. But he warned that communities must be properly consulted.
“The more that regional communities can be involved in the discussion and the planning and decision-making around the way that the energy transition rolls out, the better results that we’ll get,” Mr Bray said.
In a statement, Transgrid said it was undertaking extensive consultation with landholders and that the final route for VNI West in NSW would be decided after further consideration of environmental and social impacts.
Community members have until March 4 to make submissions on Transgrid’s preferred route for VNI West.
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