Drehid Against Wind Turbines
Action groups including Drehid Against Wind Turbines have begun to raise awareness of a renewed effort by Element Power to seek planning permission for a wind farm in North West Kildare. I have sought further information from Element Power but have not received anything back yet. They have notified some residents, via writing, of their intention to begin a consultation phase.
I also see that the company registered the domain name drehidwindfarm.ie in July, but the site has yet to go live. Until it does go live, information will be unreliable, but we do have some details already.
The proposed wind farm is a subset of a single cluster from the original Maighne Wind Farm that was refused planning permission. The cluster of turbines is circled in red on the map below.
A New Strategy?
It would be wise for the people of West Kildare that are not directly affected by the Drehid Cluster to give support to those raising awareness of the problems associated with it. In the future, it is possible that Element Power will seek to build some of the other clusters too.
The strategy could well be to renew their efforts on a smaller scale, but to target one area after another. If successful with the Drehid Wind Farm, one would imagine that they will seek permission to build further farms. For example, the proposed Cloncumber Cluster consists of 2 turbines in Lullymore and a further 11 stretching from Ballyteague Forest between the Slate River and the Grand Canal.
The 4 turbines in Ballyteague Forest would require clearing of trees in a 66 metre (72 yards) radius around the turbine. This would result in the removal of 1.3 hectares (3.2 acres) of forestry at each turbine. In addition, the access roads to each of the turbines need to be 33 metres (36 yards) wide. This would require the removal of all trees in a 33 metre span from the route between each set of turbines.
Simulations
I will be uploading a simulation of Ballyteague Forest with the proposed forestry area removed, in a few weeks. In the meantime, I have started work on a simulation of the proposed Drehid Cluster.
The turbine locations appear to be identical to the original proposal. The animated image below shows the locations of the turbines in relation to Drehid Cross. Drehid Cross is just visible in the bottom left corner of the image.
