A planning application has today been submitted to the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) for permission to build an 18 turbine wind farm north of Alnwick, making it the north east's most powerful wind farm.

npower renewables¹ is proposing a smaller scheme than was originally set out at the public exhibitions held in April. However, 18 wind turbines in that location is capable of producing enough electricity to meet the average annual needs of about 27,600² homes - that's more than enough to power every home in both Alnwick and Berwick³.

Regional Development Manager Clare Wilson said, "This state of the art project is particularly significant for the north east as the proposed Middlemoor Wind Farm would be the most powerful in the region. It is becoming increasingly apparent that both nuclear and conventional power stations are coming to the end of their useful lives and the UK will be left with an energy gap. A new round of nuclear power stations is unlikely to come on-line until 2015, so in the meantime, wind power is the best placed technology to plug that gap."

She continued, "We have listened to the comments that we have received during our public consultation and have reduced the scheme from 25 to 18 turbines. This means that the turbines closest to North and South Charlton have been removed or relocated and the wind farm will now be over a kilometre from the nearest uninvolved dwelling.

"We have also extended the Environmental Impact Assessment to include the analysis of the impact of shadow flicker and tourism, which were issues raised at the public exhibitions."

Despite the reduction in the number of turbines proposed, the Middlemoor Wind Farm would still have a total generating capacity of over 50 megawatts and, therefore, falls under the rules of the Electricity Act 1989. This means that consent for the Middlemoor Wind Farm must be obtained from the Secretary of State after consultation with local statutory consultees.

• Michael Pullan
  npower renewables
  Tel: 0118 959 2515

Editors Notes

1. npower renewables is a specialist subsidiary of one of the UK's leading integrated energy companies, RWE npower, and is a leading renewable energy developer and operator. The company is dedicated to generating electricity using sustainable environmentally-friendly resources, and is currently developing the natural power of wind, hydro and, through its parent company, co-firing biomass as significant sources of power for the UK's present and future electricity needs.
   
   In November 2003, npower renewables' sister company, electricity retailer, npower, and Greenpeace, announced the establishment of the npower juice fund, in association with the company's green electricity product npower juice. This fund is helping to support the development of "new" renewable energy technologies such as wave and tidal.



2. 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 (based on Welsh homes = 1.213 million, England = 21.109 million, Scotland = 2.217 million, Northern Ireland = 652,000) gives an average electricity usage of 4,666 kWh per year per household.
   
   The energy predicted to be generated by the proposal has been calculated using an assumed capacity factor of 27.3% and is based on an installed capacity of 54 MW. The energy capture, capacity factor and equivalent homes figure relating to this project may change as site specific information is gathered.
3. According to 2001 census.

back

top