Tuesday, February 09, 2010
Following recent
claims predicting every farm will have a wind turbine within
five years West Coast Energy calls for farmers interested in wind
energy as a diversification option to seek a development partner
now or face at best disappointment from feasibility or planning
refusal, or at worst spiralling costs.
West Coast Energy is keen to hear
from Scottish Farmers interested in exploring the possibility of a
wind development on their land: indeed it even offers a free site
assessment service. However, the developer urges the need for a
realistic, sensitive and pragmatic approach to the proliferation of
wind development on farmland. Each individual site requires an
expert evaluation, and a proportion will simply not be suitable to
progress development.
Richard Fearnall, Development
Manager, West Coast Energy explains: "Of course I support
predictions for the growth of farm land wind development projects,
but I would caution that each farm site needs to be expertly
assessed to understand its particular technical, environmental,
planning and commercial requirements and issues. I'd say that if we
saw even 50 per cent of UK farms carrying some kind of wind
development in five years, it would represent a major advance.
"While the new Feed In Tariff
arrangements will simplify wind developments on farmland, there are
many other considerations which need to be handled by the experts:
turbine positioning, grid connection costs, wind speed monitoring,
planning and environmental impact assessment requirements, turbine
procurement and installation and financial considerations. My
advice would be to engage with a realistic and experienced
developer with the in-house skills to handle these issues and take
the strain away from the farmer."
