A touch of wind

I've been talking about alternative energy on and off - well, windfarms - and have decided I approve. Although I'm writing this on the day the government announces it won't be subsidising charges for electricity transfer to the places it needs to go - mainly the population centres in England - so the places with the most wind and waves will have to pay most to get their electricity down to the people that need it. This is likely to be a bone of contention between Edinburgh and Westminster.

So, according to today's Scotsman, if you generate electricity in the South East, you'll be paid £8 per kilowatt for it; if you do the same in Skye, you have to pay £23 per kilowatt, and in the Western Isles, £61 per kilowatt. Which may make alternative energy schemes in unpopulated places prohibitively expensive. I don't know what this means for your financial projections if you are halfway through building a windfarm.

I did meet someone who was halfway through building a windfarm, but luckily he's in charge of the site, not the financial model. He took me up to see. It's 8 miles away from a road across very unhospitable terrain - heather, bogs, not even walkable - and so one of the biggest jobs is building a road up there. So the first privilege about the trip was going somewhere in a jeep that you normally wouldn't have been able to get to. Amazing views. And a lot of them live up there in caravans while they're working. I thought you'd like to see these privileged-access photographs.



And then seeing them up close, I got almost the same kind of feeling as I do seeing the Angel of the North. They are so sculptural and elegant. The tallest ones are 83 metres, and I got to see the blades lying on the ground, waiting for the wind to drop so that they can be craned up onto the tower. I can't remember how long they are, but they are enormous, looking like the bones of a huge whale. They're made of carbon fibre so they only weigh 11 tonnes each. And there are tiny holes along the blades so if any water gets in it doesn't slosh around in there for ever.


The way the towers and blades catch the light, especially against a troubled sky, is quite beautiful. And as the blades turn, they also make moving stripes up and down each other's towers, which is interesting to watch.

Apparently all the turbines are controlled from a central point in Europe, where people look at screens to bring them on and off-line. When we went up there, one of them was swinging in the breeze (apparently, it should have been 'locked off', according to my guide) but he was confident the chaps in the control room would spot it before long and put the brakes on.

If you want to hire the crane, by the way, it's £12,000 a day.

Despite living around a construction site for the past two years, the local population of deer don't seem a bit worried.

I also met an engineer who is a bit of an amateur photographer (although these are my pictures: I'm sure his are better), as well as a senior engineer, so he's collected a library of images from all the sites (in oil, gas, etc as well as windfarms) he's been on in lots of different countries. If anyone in branding needs engineering photographs from someone who knows what he's looking at as well as how to work on site...