Amid unconfirmed reports some big investors in the former Babcock & Brown offshoot have been selling down their stakes in the company, Infigen explained its share price decline by pointing to a global decline in renewable energy share prices. ''The sentiment towards renewable energy businesses generally has weakened in the last 12 months."

Mr Rees, standing at his back fence looking onto a neighbour's paddock that will feature turbines, says he has concerns. He's worried about brolga and wedge-tail eagle populations and noise levels.

Hobart people are being used as guinea pigs in an experiment to test untried wind turbines, Hobart City Council aldermen said last night. They expressed fury at the failure and damage to the turbines on Hobart's waterfront Marine Board building on August 11, coming after the council had included safety concerns in its opposition to the turbines.

The Moorabool Shire Council remains adamant the proposed Pykes Hill wind farm should not go ahead. The application for the proposed $18 million, three-turbine wind station was refused at a council meeting last Wednesday.

Turbines on the Tararua wind farm are spinning again, three days after vandals broke in and caused hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of damage to the transformers that supply it. The turbines have not been spinning since the break-in.

The four wind turbines on the Marine Board building will be shut down until a full investigation has been done by Workplace Standards Tasmania. Roy Ormerod, general manager of Workplace Standards Tasmania, confirmed yesterday the turbine's supplier, I Want Energy, had been ordered to turn off the turbines.

The Environment Court's verdict to annul the proposed wind farm comprising 176-turbine at Lammermoor Range worth $2 billion has been objected to by the Meridian Energy. The Company has raised an appeal with the High Court, which has been consented. On Monday, the Environment Court was urged by Justices John Fogarty and Lester Chisholm to rethink about the issue of wind farm by taking in view the additional proofs.

Noise standards paving the way for billion-dollar wind-farm developments across the country are biased and should be ripped up, academics say. Critics have panned the latest New Zealand standard on wind-farm noise as a "fait accompli", written by a Standards New Zealand committee, dominated by industry members, that claimed to have reached consensus.

Brazen but brainless thieves have risked their lives by breaking into a Manawatu wind farm switch yard in an apparent attempt to steal copper wire. Thirty-one turbines were shut down at TrustPower's Tararua wind farm about 2am yesterday after thieves cut through a wire fence, drained transformer coolant oil and dug up copper wire bands. The loss of coolant triggered alarms which shut the turbines down.

Divisions over a proposed wind farm continue to run deep in Penshurst as developers step up their efforts to gain local support. ...Keith Staff, who retired to Penshurst from Melbourne with his wife Maureen in 2008, is president of the newly formed Southern Grampians Landscape Guardians (SGLG). ..."The major concern about this proposal is that it's simply too big," he said.

The state power company wanted the High Court to quash last November's Environment Court decision, but Justice Chisholm and Justice Fogarty decided yesterday that step was too unusual. They determined Judge Jon Jackson in the Environment Court had wrongly applied parts of the Resource Management Act (RMA) to throw out consents for the wind farm, of up to 630 megawatts, that had been issued by the Central Otago District Council and the Otago Regional Council.

Thieves apparently targeting copper wire at the Tararua wind farm have brought 31 turbines to a halt, cost hundreds of thousands of dollars and risked electrocution, TrustPower says.

The state-owned generator and retailer argued in Dunedin in June that a "test" developed by the Environment Court, which declined it consents to build the country's biggest wind farm, was unprecedented in nearly 20 years of the Resource Management Act.

A wind energy lobby group fears the turbine troubles on Hobart's Marine Board building could damage the reputation of the growing industry. ...Hobart City Council alderman Peter Sexton yesterday called for a full investigation before any of the turbines were switched back on. "How can Workplace Standards have completed a proper investigation in 24 hours?"Ald Sexton said.

The largest wind farm in the southern hemisphere will be built in south-western Victoria, with backers claiming it will generate enough power to run more than 220,000 homes.

"While I am happy the fail-safe mechanism worked, it is disappointing that despite induction processes being undertaken ... human error has been found to be the cause of the problem."

They were designed to withstand cyclones but yesterday's blustery conditions were enough to wreck two wind power turbines on top of the Marine Board Building. The turbines were seen spinning out of control in winds of up to 54km/h just before midday - before two blades came loose and fell in on themselves.

A state government response to a report on wind farms has referred to community enhancement contributions by developers as "voluntary." This is just one of a number of responses which will not sit well with those groups and individuals which have expressed strong concerns about the effect of wind farms on neighbours and on the community generally.

Wind farm company Acciona Energy says it is frustrated that one farming family can hold up a proposed wind farm. ...The Paltridge family has taken the energy company to the environment and resource court and says the proposed wind farm will ruin its land value.

The Waubra wind farm, near Ballarat, is detrimental to residents' health, a specialist consultant's report has found. ...The Dean Report by Noise Measurement Services found Waubra resident Noel Dean "has been and is currently adversely affected by the presence and activity of the Waubra wind farm".