Wind Turbines on Islay - an Update

Since Al Gore's movie 'An Inconvenient Truth' has been shown all over the world, it seems that people are suddenly more aware of the climate change and its possible impact on our daily lives and that of future generations. Having seen the movie myself, I must admit it was an eye opener for me and probably for a lot of other people as well. Partly because of the movie, saving energy has become very fashionable and almost everybody is talking about it, and so are the media. That's a good thing and absolutely necessary to save the planet from dramatic climate changes. Let's hope all this talking will be put into action to really do something for our planet. It's not really a coincidence that I write about the Islay Wind Turbines on this particular day and Armin already blogged about the Limpet Wave Generator. Today is 7/7/7 - the day of Livearth, which is a 24-hour, 7-continent concert series taking place and brings together more than 100 music artists and 2 billion people to trigger a global movement in order to solve the climate crisis.

This takes me to the reason of this post. A while back I wrote about the possibility of wind turbines on Islay near Port Ellen. At the time of writing, it wasn't very clear to me what the exact plans were and some weeks ago an interesting discussion took place (see the comments under this post) between me and Ken Mclean, who is the treasurer of the Islay Energy Trust (IET). Later on we continued this discussion by email. This was very useful for me and I have learned from Ken what the intentions of the IET are in relation to the proposed wind farm on Islay, meaning three relatively small turbines:

Quote from Ken: The proposed three wind turbines in Port Ellen will not meet electricity demand on Islay (plus Jura and Colonsay – they are on the same spur), but will make a decent contribution. The electrical infrastructure on the islands (cables and switching etc) has a very limited capacity to carry significant local generation. This situation is unlikely to change significantly in the next decade or so unless the new political powers in Edinburgh intervene. We (IET) have no further plans for industrial size installation at the moment and have none on the horison either. We are however interested in stimulating domestic application of micro wind generation, solar equipment, bio mass heating etc.

Ken's explanation eased my mind somewhat, since I'm not a big fan of wind turbines, although I find them very necessary. Earlier I had the impression that Islay had to face a 'Western Isles' like wind park with dozens of wind turbines. This, however, is a totally different story and I'm glad that a huge wind farm like on Harris will not be built on Islay. If you are interested in the developments of the IET and like to stay up to date, you can join the meeting to be held at Bowmore Hall at 7.30pm on Monday 23rd July. Also the website of the IET will be updated shortly to explain in more detail what the plans of the IET are.