Koperfontein - The winds of change are blowing.

It's little more than a siding and a stop on the railway line to Saldanha, but Koperfontein is getting a new lease of life thanks to a wind farm and a new coffee shop and venue.

- JOHAN VAN ZYL

The aerial view of T Koperfontein on Google Earth's summer-bronzed satellite image - and Mapcarta's green winter image shows a cluster of silos and a smattering of houses, crammed in between the railway line and the R45 provincial route that connects Saldanha with Villiersdorp via Vredenburg, Malmesbury and Paarl.

It resembles one of those one-horse towns, perhaps a ramshackle railway station, that you'd miss if you sneezed as you drove past. And that was indeed the case for yonks, especially after the modern R45 was built that no longer ran through Koperfontein (or its larger neighbouring town, Hopefield).

Now look a bit closer at those satellite images and see whether you can spot a strange group of fine little white lines that lie roughly in the shape of a horseshoe from west to east, on either side of the road, above this small hamlet. In December 2012, construction began on 37 enormous Vestas wind turbine generators, and just more than a year later it started to supply green electricity to the national grid. Known as Umoya Energy Wind Farm, it achieved its commercial operations date on 1 February 2014, the first commercial wind farm in the country to reach this milestone.

They may not look like much on Google Earth, but these wind turbines absolutely dominate the landscape around Koperfontein.