The first community-owned wind turbine in the Western Isles will be installed by the end of tomorrow and connected to the grid by next month.
Energy generated will be sold into the National Grid through the Feed-in Tariff scheme, and will provide around £80,000 a year for the local community, which consists of 70 households on the west side of Lewis.
The huge components arrived by lorry to the village of Siabost on the western side of the island, where it will be installed on common grazing croft land. The neighbouring communities of South Siabost, Dalmore and Dalbeg will all benefit.
Almost 10 years ago, a private developer approached them, seeking to build a wind farm on their grazing ground. Negotiations with the developer failed, but with support and funding from Community Energy Scotland, the community took on the £2 million project themselves.
The project created its first job in January of this year, with the trust appointing Angela Macleod as development officer to ensure the funds generated by the turbine are distributed as identified by the local community.
Speaking this week, Ms Macleod said: "It is all systems go now. Foundations works are complete on site and we have the road access established.
"The site has one of the best possible wind resources in the UK and will help fund our community needs to improve life here for the next generation and hopefully reduce depopulation."
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article