Plans Are Made to Build Major Irish Wind Farm

The Irish Sea might soon house a major wind farm consisting of as much as 440 turbines. Thus, it seems that Centrica and Dong Energy have just presented their initial proposals for said Rhiannon farm, and construction operations are expected to begin in 2017.

Green-heads worldwide can only rejoice at the news, and so can those who are now well convinced that investing in renewable energy sources can help boost national economies by creating new job opportunities.

Should things go as planned, the Rhiannon wind farm will be built between Anglesey and the Isle of Man. This choice of location is based on the fact that the overall wind power potential in this area supposedly can reach as much as 4.2GW.

In order to obtain this portion of land, the afore-mentioned companies took part in The Crown Estate's offshore wind licensing.

Their joint venture, known as Celtic Array, is now expected to officially present the Planning Inspectorate with an application for permission to carry on with this project. It is most likely that the application will be submitted by the end of 2013.

Based on this initial proposal, the Planning Inspectorate has now been allowed to spend 42 days to pin-down the exact issues Centrica and Dong Energy are to focus on when coming up with their final application.

As Business Green reports, for the time being there has been only one complaint raised against the Rhiannon wind farm project. Namely, some people argued that the wind turbines might get in the way of ferries.

However, given the scale of the project and the fact that sustainable development and turning towards green energy sources are things we must all strive for, this hardly seems like a big price to pay, especially since, from where we stand, relatively easy solutions are well within reach.