Five-turbine North Yell windfarm approved by councillors
Adam CivicoThe North Yell Development Company (NYDC) was successful this week in its bid for permission to erect five wind turbines near Gutcher in Yell.
The small windfarm will consist of turbines with a hub height of 44m and a blade length of 70m situated at Garth, Yell, with a capacity of 4.25 megawatts.
It has been in the pipeline for almost eight years but had recently been held up by the planning department, whose officials have been kept busy by other larger projects.
The project has been supported by Community Energy Scotland, which has worked with the NYDC for the last five years and funded aspects of the project to planning, including the environmental.
Funded in part by bank loans, the turbines will take advantage of the new NINES smart grid network being planned by Scottish and Southern Energy.
The application was swiftly approved at Wednesday’s planning board meeting, with councillor for the North Isles Laura Baisley saying the project would be of “potentially huge benefit” to the community.
Harry Hatton
This madness for so called free energy has only just begun, it’ll spread like a cancer on Shetland’s landscape; once the HVDC interconnector links us to the mainland, nowhere on our islands will be safe from these hideous monstrosities.
Charles Banham
Personally, I prefer Wind Turbines to the use of fossil fuels to generate electricity.
But to those who conceived the idea of a ‘Community Owned’ wind farm should tell us all exactly what actual ‘benefits’ this will be to the North Yell Community.
Perhaps I am being negative, or just overly cautious, but I cannot get my head around the obvious scenario where our wind turbines will produce circa 4.2 megawatts of electricity per annum, which will be sold to the UK National Grid at a knock-down price, which in turn, the residents of North Yell will have to buy back that same electricity from SSE at an inflated price. Think about it!
Granted, the energy sold to the Grid will put about £1.2 million pounds per year for the ‘community’ of North Yell. BUT.. what will this money be spent on, and more importantly, exactly WHO will decide that?
The best scenario for me would be to use a significant amount of this money to subsidise the extortionate cost of the energy bills of real people of North Yell, rather than ‘vanity ‘ projects that really offer little or nothing to most people and sadly, do nothing but put huge profits in the pockets of builders, architects and Builders Merchants. Let us never forget that the ‘Community’ is People, real people who are struggling in these lean and mean times of austerity
JohnTulloch, Arrochar
Before we rush to condemn fossil fuel power generation whose emissions, unlike in China, are rigorously regulated here, perhaps we may consider the following:
Longannet coal power station in Fife isn’t a pretty sight with a couple of large chimneys occupying, I guess, about a quarter of a square mile of site, where it provides 2600MW of power at about 85% load factor, equivalent to a constant output of 2210MW.
The Whitelee wind farm near Glasgow, the largest in Europe, by contrast occupies about 35 square miles of land with a total of 215 x 110m high turbines which can produce 539MW of power at a load factor (generous) of about 25% which is equivalent to a constant energy output of about 135MW.
So it will require more than 16 Whitelees to replace the energy output from Longannet, that is, over 3500 x 110m high turbines occupying 560 square miles of land and – guess what folks – you STILL NEED LONGANNET ON THE DAYS WHEN THERE IS NO WIND!!!!!
David Spence
Charles, we are talking about ‘ short term thinking selfish capitalist’s ‘ who do not give a damn about Shetland or the people as long as ‘ THEY PROFIT and Line their pockets ‘…….This is the whole agenda of Viking Energy and their project where ‘ THEY benefit (The CT’s return in the project is laughable…..a meager £20 – £23 million a year……..not even loose change) and everybody else pays dearly.
Remember, your average Capitalist only thinks of themselves and what benefits they can get regardless to any damage they do, morally, environmentally, ecologically or socially. As the bible says ‘ Money is the root of all evils ‘ and capitalism exemplifies this immensely. (eg. USA (4.5% of the worlds population, Consumes 31% of all global resources, produces 25% of all global pollution…..need I say more????)
David B Spence
Consuming 31% while contributing 25% of pollution, for a country of that size has to be a significant move in the right direction? no?
But anyway, the real reason for this little comment is so my friends and neighbours can be clear in the fact that the above comments are not from me, nor do they even vaguely reflect my views.
Yours,
David B Spence. (born and bred in North Yell, supporter of NYDC and VE, proud to be lucky enough not to have to put quotes around the word community as I know exactly what it means.)
David Spence
David from Yell, I am referring to the massive project of VE and the implications of such a project on tourism, environment, the ecology and, if any, commercial benefits to Shetland (compared to the costs of the project will be minimal).
Yes, you may support the project, but on what grounds???……….is it anything to do with the very much smaller project which may happen on Yell or is it based on the minority shareholders (interested to know if the people in Yell running their proposed project are shareholders or potential shareholders of the VE Project????) making money based on greed and profits regardless to any short or long term impact this project will have on the islands???
I suspect, if money, greed and profits are involve you probably could not care as long as you are better off financially or are you projecting the Yell Project to be just as important as the VE Project and that both projects are worthy because of the ‘ perceived benefit ‘ to the islands regardless to, as mentioned, any negative impact the project will have……….short term gain and stuff the long term consequences, eh????