Four Lewis crofting townships are going head-
Sandwick North Street, Sandwick East Street (including Lower Sandwick), Melbost and Branahuie, and Aignish propose to erect turbines on their common grazings to the west of Stornoway.
North Street is planning a single turbine while Aignish intends to erect two. Melbost is seeking to build eight and East Street proposes ten machines. Each turbine is five megawatt.
Planning permission has yet to be applied for but should go through smoothly as rivals Lewis Windpower (LWP) has already gained planning consent for the same exact spots.
LWP refuses to relinquish the 21 sites and intends to compete in next year’s financial support round.
Subsidies are offered under an auction called Contracts for Difference (CfD) where only the lowest priced bids are successful. All island schemes will compete against technologies such as offshore wind which is built on a much greater scale.
LWP is to bid for its Stornoway Windfarm and Eishken schemes while Forsa Energy said it will apply for its North Tolsta development. Both companies are looking at the potential of making their windfarms more financially efficient by using bigger turbines, thus giving scope to submit a more competitive bid for subsidy.
Eligibility for CfD requires planning permission and a grid connection which the two large developers already have under their belt. The crofting schemes believe they will meet these conditions by the time the competition opens in May.
However, LWP does not have the legal right to the land and has applied to the Scottish Land Court to resume the ground around the turbines so they are taken out of crofting tenure.
The crofters’ grazing committees oppose this move and a large number of crofters in the respective areas have lodged formal objections.
Meanwhile, the four villages have lodged a bid with the Crofting Commission for permission to develop the same sites themselves.
All the various manoeuvring is academic without a subsea cable to export the energy to mainland markets.
Any new windfarm projects in the islands hinge on an interconnector -
LWP says its Stornoway Wind Farm makes up 180MW of the capacity needed to trigger the new cable, is ready to bid in next year's auction and meets all of the criteria required to do so while downsizing its scheme will make it less competitive and less likely to prevail in an auction.
The company insists the larger Western Isles projects are required to justify the new cable.
But the village schemes enhances the case for the subsea cable say the crofting townships.
They pledged that all the profits would go into a community benefit fund for distribution throughout the whole of the Western Isles.
Spokesperson Rhoda Mackenzie said: “We want to spread this, to invest in the economy of the entire Western Isles, from the Butt to Barra. The profit won’t be kept by the four townships.”
She stressed that the size of community benefit funds – for investment in good causes – is ten times greater when wind farms are community owned as opposed to corporate.
Windfarm rivals in subsidy competition
6 August 2018
