Volt Farmer
A visionary, passionate about our climate and opportunity for change.
Managed by Volt Farmer, the Dromana Climate Smart Farm is the first of its kind on the Mornington Peninsula.
Combining a renewable energy farm with regenerative farming, immersive education and Indigenous Australian cultural promotion, the Dromana project makes use of a small footprint to create an enormous amount of local shared value.
Located in the Green Wedge Zone, opposite the Dromana Industrial Estate, its visually a world of contrasts. However, with both the business and local community focus significantly shifting towards sustainable initiatives, it presents immense opportunities to the region.
Volt Farmer is run by a passionate owner, highly invested in renewable farming and sustainability. They develop land use opportunities to provide farmers and the local community with sustainable sources of revenue. Building and financing solar farms, battery stations, green waste processing, soil health programs, promote carbon farming and alternative crops.
The Importance of conversations
When Volt Farmer first engaged PTP’s services, ensuring that Jackie had not only the credentials but the beliefs that would align with this project, was of significant importance to them.
Being the first application of its type on the Mornington Peninsula, the approach for lodgement was slightly different to more common applications. Extensive consultation was undertaken with key stakeholders to address all the likely issues in the lodged documentation. This was to ensure that, just because this was different and new, that the uncertainty didn’t influence the community’s expectations of the proposal.
The focus of the planning approach was addressing landscape considerations and demonstrating that there would be no offsite impacts.
As the project proceeded, we also needed to navigate not only planning considerations but additionally United Energy’s expectations around energy infrastructure and the potential to increase the electricity resources to homes and businesses on the Peninsula.
A way forward
During Council’s assessment of the application the State Government updated their policy on Solar Energy Facilities and as a result, the Minister for Planning is now the Planning Authority for new solar projects of this scale.
We look forward to seeing this project into fruition and continue to provide Volt Farmer with planning advice on a variety of sustainable
farming initiatives being contemplated for the site.
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