Ameeting for residents to discuss the Southern Winds offshore wind project set for next week has been postponed.

The project is located 8-20km off the coastline between Port MacDonnell and Nelson.

It is being jointly developed by BlueFloat Energy and Energy Estate.

It is anticipated the project will host up to 77 offshore turbines, each with a capacity of between 15-20 MW, as well as two offshore substations.

At this stage there are two potential subsea cable routes and onshore transmission routes from the offshore substations to the proposed grid connection points.

The information sessions were to be held at the Port MacDonnell Community Complex on Monday and Portland Yacht Club the next day from 4-6pm.

Energy Estate Partnerships and Engagement officer Rosie King said organisers were asked to postpone due to the swearing in of the Grant District Council’s new councillors.

“We are using their community complex in Port MacDonnell, and we were not aware that we were going to overlap in time of their new councillors,” she said.

“We were requested to postpone it because their councillors pleasingly would want to meet with us and may be interested in attending the information session because this project is off the coast there near Port MacDonnell.

“We recognise that it is an impactful project, the number one issue for coastal communities is the visual impact so we are very happy to understand the councillors are very interested and wanted to attend the information session so at their request we are postponing it until next year.

“It is a bit close to Christmas to reschedule it to December because people get busy in those last couple of weeks leading up to Christmas.”