AT close quarters the Waubra Wind Farm turbines are an imposing presence on the landscape.
The sound underneath a spinning turbine is a powerful "swish" _ far from deafening and to a large degree drowned out by the rushing sound of the wind itself.
Sheep graze undisturbed beneath the turbines and in hot conditions seek out the shade created by the towers.
Pyrenees Shire councillor David Clark says the community is generally accepting of the wind farm.
"When I ran for council last year I doorknocked Waubra and only had two people vehemently opposed to the wind farm," Cr Clark said.
"I doorknocked four years before and it was 50-50. Fifty for it and 50 against it or concerned."
Cr Clark owns a farm at the edge of the development.
As an advocate of the development, he said it was advantageous that he did not receive income from leasing out space for turbines.
Cr Clark said one of the benefits of the wind farm was that it would ensure the rich agricultural land in the area would remain zoned for farming only.
Farmers are able to continue cropping or grazing beneath the turbines.
Cr Clark said Acciona had endeavored to respond to community concerns.
He gave the example of the company installing a new television signal transmitter after complaints the turbines had interfered with television reception.
When it is operating at full capacity the Waubra Wind Farm will generate electricity worth more than $35 million a year.
The wind farm will also provide a financial return for the community with $64,000 _ $500 for each turbine _ to be placed in a community fund each year.
Cr Clark is secretary of a committee that will determine how the fund is spent.
The wind farm has also inspired a community festival, that will take place in October.
The wind farm, built and owned by Spanish company Acciona, is the largest in the Southern Hemisphere.
More than 40 turbines are now feeding power into the grid, with the first commissioned on March 4.
In terms of cost there would be few projects in the Central Highlands to rival the wind farm which, when finished, will represent an investment of more than $450 million _ all of it Spanish money.
The construction phase of the wind farm involved up to 200 workers and once the project is complete, 26 full-time, permanent jobs will remain.
One of the 26 is wind farm facilities manager, Glenn Wright, an engineer whose career experience includes a stint in the Royal Australian Navy.
"Of the 26 workers, 23 are from the Ballarat region," Mr Wright said.
Mr Wright, who moved from Melbourne to Waubra, lives with turbines not far from his back door and just a few hundred metres from the newly built wind farm office in Harrisons Rd.
It is a modern building with a passive solar design, solar hot water, thermal venting and a construction that features reclaimed timbers.
The turbines themselves are a mix of local and overseas manufacturing.
The turbine blades were made in either Brazil or the U.S. The towers, manufactured in three sections, came from factories in Tasmania or Portland while the nacelles, the enclosures at the top of the towers containing the generators,
were made in Spain.
Each of the 128 turbines is rated at 1.5MW, making Waubra a 192MW power plant.
By comparison the notoriously polluting Hazelwood coal-fired power station in the Latrobe Valley is rated at 1600MW.
Power is fed from the turbines via a series of substations into the 220kV powerlines that run between Ballarat and Horsham.
The turbines start spinning when the wind is between 3m and 4m a second and shut down if the wind speed reaches 25m a second.
Mr Wright said a couple of noise complaints had been received but the farm had so far complied with all the conditions on its building permit.
He said the blades, the tips of which move at up to 250kmh, had yet to claim any birds or bats.
The turbines are constantly monitored and there are workers at the Harrisons Rd site around the clock.
The company will not disclose exactly how much energy the turbines generate but does claim it is equivalent to the amount of power used annually by 140,000 homes.
According to the Victorian Utilities Consumption Survey, the average Victorian household consumes 4907 kilowatt hours of power each year.
This would make total consumption for the 140,000 homes about 700,000,000 kilowatt hours and at a conservative wholesale price of 5c a kilowatt, that mean the power is worth about $35 million annually to Acciona.
This excludes the value of renewable energy certificates and the possibility of a premium paid for the green energy.
The wind farm does not appear to have drawn the opposition that faces proposed wind farms near Smeaton and Lal Lal.
Mr Wright believes this could be because the Waubra project involved several landholders while the other two projects involve turbines on single properties.
The Waubra Wind Farm is expected to be fully operational before the end of the year.
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