A planning application has now been submitted to Tendring District Council for a 5 turbine wind farm on land at Earls Hall Farm between St Osyth and Clacton-on-Sea. If successful the wind farm would make a valuable contribution to renewable energy targets and the fight against climate change.

Vicky Portwain, the developer of the scheme said, "We have spent over a year carrying out detailed environmental studies which have been submitted to Tendring District Council with the planning application.

"These studies demonstrate that this is an appropriate location for a wind farm. The studies are the culmination of a lot of hard work by the staff at npower renewables, as well as many independent consultants.

"The consultation we have carried out locally has been generally positive. We recently arranged a bus trip for local residents to a wind farm in Lincolnshire. We asked everybody on board to complete a comments form and of those we received the majority indicated their support of the use of wind power at Earls Hall. This demonstrates an overall positive response, amongst those attending the trip, to the realities of an operating wind farm."

The proposed wind farm is capable of producing enough electricity to meet the average annual needs of between 5,500 and 6,000 homes each year¹. This takes into account fluctuations in wind speeds, including periods when the turbines will not be generating. A consultation period has now begun during which anyone who would like to make a comment can do so by writing to the planning office at Tendring District Council.

The Environmental Statement is available to be viewed at Tendring Planning Offices (Weeley) and has also been sent to Clacton Library and local parish councils. In order to make your thoughts on the wind farm known, you should write to:

Head of Development Control
Planning and Community Services
Council Offices
Thorpe Road
Weeley
Essex
CO16 9AJ

It would be helpful if you quote both the planning application reference number (07/00433/ FUL) and your address when writing to the planning department.

Notes

1. This figure was calculated using the following:
   
   An average home utilises 4700 kWh per year (Ref: The Digest of UK Energy Statistics 2005 gives 2004 domestic electricity consumption as 117.589 terawatt-hours (TWh) which, when taken with the 25.2 million households, Wales = 1.213 million, England = 21.109 million, Scotland = 2.217 million, Northern Ireland = 652,000, gives an average electricity usage of 4,666kWh per year per household.
   
   The energy predicted to be generated by the proposal is derived from monitoring wind speeds in the area and correlating this data to wind speeds measured at Met. Office stations. This enables a calculation to be made to estimate the average annual energy production for the site based on 5 turbines each of rated capacity of between 2 and 2.3MW.
   
   The energy capture and equivalent homes figure relating to this project may change as more information is gathered.

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