FacebookOfgem cast doubt on interconnector
20 December 2011. Electricity watchdog Ofgem has cast doubt on the viability of an interconnector cable to Shetland. Their consultation report says "Shetland is not expected to become part of the MITS". MITS is the acronym for main interconnected transmission system. In a nut shell, no interconnector for Shetland = no Viking Energy. Read Ofgem report here (see page 22).
The wind farm proposal
Scale: Approximately 127 turbines with up to 457mW capacity.
Turbine size: tower 90m, turbine blade diameter 110m. Total height - base to tip is up to 145m.
By way of comparison, the largest of the current Burradale turbines is 71m high, Lerwick Town hall clock tower is about 22m and millennia old Mousa Broch is about 13m high.
Location: Shetland Islands. UK. Specific site, most of North Central mainland Shetland.
Size: Site area will be about 18 km north-south and at widest point 11 km East to West. (That's about 11 miles by 7 miles)
Area of site: up to 12,800 hectares (32,000) acres.
Development cost about £685m at September 2010
Cable to mainland UK ("the interconnector") £550m +
Converter station, site, about 200m x 120m. Buildings will be up to 4 stories high.
Developers: 50/50 joint Project between Viking Energy Ltd (subsidiary of Shetland Charitable Trust) and SSE Viking Ltd (subsidiary of Scottish and Southern Energy). Each partner carries one vote.
Environment
Sustainable Shetland is very concerned with:
Loss of cultural heritage landscape. The site will be visible across much of Shetland. From nearly one end of the islands to the other. At night the site will more resemble airport runways than rural hills.
Lost and damaged habitats. Plant, animal and bird and fish species within and beyond the site negatively impacted.
Peat is a carbon sink. Peat takes thousands of years to form, and actively stores and absorbs climate damaging CO2. Damaging peat on this scale releases large quantities of CO2. It is madness to damage ancient peat deposits for a so-called environmental project.
This project will create an adverse impact on the landscape of almost all of Shetland. A generation will grow up knowing nothing better than hilltops covered with wind turbines.
About 65 miles of new roads (some up to 30 feet / 10m wide) through peat and blanket bog.
Quarries
- Up to 12 quarries
- Total aggregate now to be extracted: 1.47 million m
- Total area of quarries: at least 1.7 km2
3 of the quarries are to be over 2 hectares (200 x 100m) in size. Most of the others are over 1 hectare each.
Giant building site
- Concrete batching plants
- Construction camps
- Ongoing site infrastructure like control and sub-stations, set down areas, crane pads, a converter station, turbine foundations and towers.
All this can cause substantial damage on the immediate and surrounding environment, as well as effect site ecology and wildlife.
The wind farm life span is expected to be 25 years. Decommissioning will be partial, site restoration will be experimental, untried and untested, and above all - partial. Roads, foundations, ditches and other non-standing infrastructure may be left in place for ever. This will continue to cause environmental damage and exacerbate peat instability and carbon release for generations to come.
Finance
Viking Energy Ltd represents half of project. Shetland Charitable Trust holds 90% of shares in project partner Viking Energy Ltd. 10% of remaining shares held by 4 private investors. Viking Energy share of project is about £308. Initial capital stake will be around £61m. Remainder of investment to be financed through debt, borrowing and possible debt-bond issue. Project finance style funding could mean less control, greater overhead cost commitment (lenders may ask for guaranteed returns regardless of any actual profit or loss) but without necessarily spreading the risk away from the project owners.
Up side: Viking Energy have recently abandoned any claim to profit. Instead they talk of "community benefit". A vague, amorphous notion which has never been justified with any real financial models. Project profit has been arrived at without knowing the selling price of their electricity or the cost of getting that electricity to market!
Down side: If the project fails, Shetland's exposure would be a minimum of £61m, but could also be as high as £360m if financed through borrowing. With Charitable Trust total funds standing around £180m, this would spell financial ruin for Shetland now, and for generations to follow.
It has never been spelt out where the initial £61m stake would come from.
There is a danger that current Charitable Trust spending of £12m a year would be curtailed for the first five years of the start of construction.
From the point of view of community funds, this project is a reckless gamble at the expense of the environment, landscape of Shetland. Read more on the wind farm finances.
Sustainable Shetland was formed in March 2008 in response to plans by Viking Energy to build Europe's largest wind farm in Shetland. We now have 818 paid-up members at 24/12/11.
- 127 turbines
- up to 145m base to tip height
- covering site area of 32,000 acres
- 62 miles of new roads through moorland and bog
- plated capacity of 457mW.
- built on deep peat and blanket bog
- 25 year life span
- original EIA gave carbon payback of 48 years (fossil fuel offset). That's 69 years as grid mix!
- Current planning application claims carbon payback of less than 1 year defies belief!
- Grid connection needs 320km cable to mainland and 2 very large converter stations!
A local petition to Shetland councillors in June 2009 raised over 3474 signatures.
Council organised community planning hearings averaged out at 75% opposition
Official planning objections to ECU: 2736
Expressions of support: 1114
Over 85% of all respondents gave a Shetland address.
71% of all respondents objected to the Viking Windfarm
We recognise that renewables' must play a part in how we live in the future, however these schemes must be fit for scale and fit for purpose.
We believe that smaller community based schemes, wind to heat etc, would be a better direction to take, alongside a proactive energy conservation policy. With this in mind the group adopted the name "Sustainable Shetland". From the very beginning we have been very clear we are not opposed to ALL wind farms. For example SSE windfarm plans for the Lerwick district heating system have a lot of merit.
Key points
- The Viking windfarm exposes Shetland community funds to a very high level of risk
- The Viking windfarm risks permanent damage to large areas of Shetland's environment, landscape and ecology
- Shetland may have a good wind resource, but is very long way from point of consumption, and this means the project is only viable with massive public subsidy for electricity transmission charges across 320 km of cable.
- The Viking project was more than 2 years late in submitting a planning application; this shows the difficulties, problems and enormity of the task at hand has been consistently underestimated throughout the project
- It took Viking Energy nearly a year to submit their planning "addendum" after first claiming it would be ready in 3 months.
- The wind farm development covers a sizeable chunk of central and north mainland Shetland, and is bisected by the main North-South arterial route through Shetland.
- It is claimed to be a community project, but recent polls and council run meetings show less that 1 in 4 support the project. The Shetland community is not allowed to see what has been agreed with 50% project partner SSE Viking Ltd. Freedom of Information act requests have been repeatedly denied
- Unable to win the argument for the windfarm, Viking Energy employs PR companies (with our community money) in an attempt to sell the project to us!
- We want to see sustainable renewable energy projects in Shetland which are fit for scale, fit for purpose and provide real community benefit.
