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."
