Loch Ness Wind Farm To Proceed
Scottish electric utility SSE announced on Friday that the Scottish Government had granted consent for the Bhlaraidh wind farm, to be located north-west of Invermoriston, itself on the western shore of Loch Ness.
The planned wind farm will have a maximum capacity of 180 MW, generated by 32 wind turbines, but must address several environmental measures as it moves forward, according to Scottish Energy Minister Fergus Ewing.
Ewing was further quoted as saying that “the Bhlaraidh wind farm will create jobs both in its construction and during its lifetime, and once up and running will save thousands of tonnes of carbon dioxide each year. With this wind farm we will now be able to produce enough electricity to power the equivalent of approximately 50,900 homes.”
“SSE welcomes the decision from Scottish Ministers on Bhlaraidh wind farm, and work to address the conditions associated with the consent will now commence ahead of the construction phase,” said Colin Nicol, Director of Onshore Renewables at SSE. ““During this period, SSE will be engaging with local people. We hope to continue the strong community relationships formed historically in Glenmoriston as a result of our hydro power generation, and through the wind farm proposal in more recent years.”
“This is great news for the community as we believe this project will bring significant benefits to the area. There will be job opportunities including those for young people. We are also very pleased with the way that SSE has kept us informed and engaged on the project and we look forward to continuing to work closely with them.”
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Glad to see. I re-ran my script to scrape data from Renewable UK’s website and this Loch Ness development now shows on my bubble map here (south-west of Inverness):
http://energytrends.info/wind.shtml
btw I think it’s 108MW, not 180 as stated above?
Scottish homes must use a lot of electricity if a 180 megawatt wind farm only provides enough kilowatt-hours for 50,900 of them.
3.54 Kwhr per day sounds incredibly LOW consumption to me.
Well that is what I WAS going to write until I saw that the article stated 180 Mw and not 180 Mwhr (As I think they must have meant and you spotted).
So yes 3.54 Kw X 24 hrs is a heck of a lot of power per home.
I’d expect the wind farm to operate at about one third of capacity. Anyway, another source I looked up says 108MW as rollo47 mentioned. But if it is 108 MW then it costs about 75% more per kilowatt as new wind power in Australia. While I understand that land costs more in Great Britain and they probably have to pay for anti Nessie protection, that much extra expense does seem excessive, so maybe it is 180 MW.
At 35% capacity, I calculate 10,850 kWh per home per year, so that seems reasonable.
I guess it depends on if they are including Scottish industry in there as well because even USAians don’ come close to using an average of 10,850 kWh per year in just their homes.
20 60W light bulbs will consume that in a year. It’s significant, but not outrageous.
“20 60W light bulbs will consume that in a year. It’s significant, but not outrageous.”
Only if you leave them going 24/7.
The UK generates about 5,400 kilowatt-hours per person and there are about 2.3 people per household. That comes to 16,200 kilowatt-hours per household. That’s all up, but less than a third of electricity generated would be for actual residential use and looking it up I see a 2010 source gives 4,650 kilowatt-hours per houshold a year. Unfortunately I’m not sure if my source is accurate as the figure it gives for Australia looks differs from another source I have. Maybe I’ll dig deeper later.
Okay, dug a little deeper, the current source I’m am looking at is using a household size that is way too big for Australia while it looks about accurate for the UK. According to my power company, people here in Adelaide, South Australia, use about 5,000 kilowatt-hours a year (including electricity generated by rooftop solar).
The Adelaide yearly household average may actually be closer to 5,500 kilowatt-hours.
Ronald, my average monthly electrical bill in Florida is probably 140 dollars(used to be double that). At 10 cents a kilowatt hour that works out to 1.4MWh a month or around 16.8 MWh a year.
Looking at the information I have in front of me from 2010 it says US households average 11,900 kilowatt-hours a year, so I guess USAians do use over 10.850 kilowatt-hours a year. However, this differs from another source I’ve seen and I might check up on this later. According to my electricity company people in Adelaide here in South Australia use about 5,000 kilowatt-hours per houshold which is less than half the figure I have for US household consumption and we don’t exactly skimp on the air conditioning here.
Actually total yearly household electricity consumption might average closer to 5,500 kilowatt-hours a year here in Adelaide. It’s difficult to tell.
Scotland has a lot of land wind opportunities.
look at the coastline and the wind blowing always.
Just catch that wind energy, there is a lot more.