Vattenfall Confirms 2017 Operation For Northumbrian Wind Farm
Swedish energy company Vattenfall has confirmed Ray Wind Farm is planned to begin operations in early 2017.
Vattenfall confirmed that the 16-turbine, 54.4 MW Ray Wind Farm, set to be developed near Kirkwhelpington, in the English county of Northumberland, would see the commencement of preparatory works begin later this month, and was set to begin “generating low carbon electricity … in early 2017.”
“It’s good to get underway with the Ray Wind Farm construction project,” said Paul Nickless, Vattenfall’s construction manager for Ray Wind Farm. “Throughout the 18-month build we will ensure local residents are kept up to date with construction activity. This is an exciting engineering exercise and we hope people will take a lot of interest in what we are doing.”
Vattenfall is also getting ready to begin a five-month consultation with the local community. Vattenfall wants to engage with the local residents the best way to invest a 20-year community fund worth approximately £250,000 per year, gathering “views on the best way to organise the fund and what local residents think the index linked payment should be invested in.”
“We want to start talking to people about the community fund in August,” said Joanne Hutchinson, Vattenfall’s Senior Communications Adviser. “From 2017, Vattenfall will pay £250,000 per year into the fund. This is a large amount of money and to ensure it’s put to the best possible local use we need to start preparations for that now. So I would ask local people to get involved and register their interest in the fund and the construction of the wind farm via the freepost form or the Vattenfall website.”
Interestingly, despite the recent announcement by the UK Government to extricate onshore wind from access to the Renewable Obligations financial scheme, Vattenfall has intimated that is will be able to make use of the grace period such a cut would create, and is expecting to be accredited under the UK’s RO support scheme.
Have a tip for CleanTechnica? Want to advertise? Want to suggest a guest for our CleanTech Talk podcast? Contact us here.
Latest CleanTechnica.TV Video
CleanTechnica uses affiliate links. See our policy here.
