Wind turbine
fundamentals

• A high average wind speed. Typically the site would be on top of a hill or in a wide open space with no obstructions nearby. See more details on how windy it needs to be ?

• Sufficient separation from noise-sensitive neighbours. Modern wind turbines are remarkably quiet, but even so there are very stringent maximum noise levels that have to be met to obtain planning consent. The minimum separation varies depending on the turbine size and background noise level, but as a rough guide the following should ensure no problems. Closer separations would be possible if there were high background noise levels, from a busy road for example.

Minimum noise separation distance from residential properties

• Good grid connection. All of the wind turbines that we supply require a suitable three-phase electrical supply to connect to. As a rough guide you will need an 11 kV transformer or substation that is roughly 50% larger than the rated power output of the wind turbine you are considering, or an 11 kV three-phase power line passing close to the wind turbine site that can have a new transformer / substation connected to it. The larger multi-MW turbines could grid connect to 33 kV power lines, though generally it is too expensive for sub-1MW wind turbine projects to connect at such a high voltage.

• Good site access. Wind turbines are large and heavy, so the access roads and tracks to the site need to be capable of taking oversize loads with no weak bridges, excessively tight corners or steep gradients. Obviously as the proposed turbine gets larger, the size of the constituent parts that have to be delivered get larger and the access requirements more stringent.

• No special environmental or landscape designations. Also note that a lot of the older objections to wind turbines due to bird strikes have now been shown to be unfounded, but even so it would be good practice to not install a wind turbine(s) in an area that had special bird designations. Peat bog is also generally a no-go area for wind turbines.

Wind turbines are very visible within the landscape, so sites in National Parks will find it virtually impossible to obtain planning consent. In Areas of Outstanding Natural Beauty (AONB), it would be very difficult and unlikely, but still possible if there was overwhelming local support.

Assuming your site meets these basic requirements, please get in touch and we will complete an initial (free) desktop assessment, and assuming it still looks suitable would recommend our wind feasibility study package.

Yes, and many wind turbines are installed on working farms. Generally speaking, after installation, a wind turbine on a farm will have negligible impact on the day-to-day operation of the farm.

Assuming your site has a good average wind speed, a wind turbine (once planning consent is obtained) would prove to be a very worthwhile investment and provide additional income to your farm.

The integration of wind turbines on agricultural land is an increasingly popular practice that offers a symbiotic relationship between farming and renewable energy production. Farms usually have large, open spaces that are ideal for capturing wind. Installing turbines on these lands allows farmers to diversify their income streams by generating electricity alongside traditional agricultural activities.

One of the advantages of wind turbines on farms is that they occupy relatively small footprints, allowing the majority of the land to remain available for crops or livestock. The presence of turbines does not significantly interfere with farming operations. In fact, farmers can continue to use the land for its original purpose while benefiting from the additional revenue generated by selling excess electricity back to the grid.

Map of average UK Windspeeds

Basically, the windier the better.

This map shows the average annual wind speeds throughout the UK. Not surprisingly the highest wind speeds correlate with the highest ground, so the mountainous and hilly parts of Scotland, Wales and northern and south-west England have the highest wind speeds.

However, all is not lost if you don’t live in one of those areas. There are many localised areas with high wind speeds, typically on tops of hills or in flat open areas. They may be too small to appear on the map above but may still have high annual average wind speeds.

Any site that has an annual average wind speed of 7 m/s or more would be considered excellent for farm wind turbines, and in fact many sites with as little as 5.5 m/s can still be viable when using some of the ‘oversized rotor’ wind turbines now available. If you have less than 5 m/s it almost certainly wouldn’t be economically viable to install a wind turbine.

Yes and no. Obviously wind is a naturally occurring phenomenon beyond humankind’s manipulation, but there is one thing that can be done to increase wind speeds experienced by a wind turbine at a given location; go upwards by increasing the tower height.

As wind gets closer to the ground it loses some of its speed due to friction as it rubs against any ‘surface roughness’. Surface roughness can be low in areas of wide open ploughed fields or short grassland, or higher over forested areas and more complex terrain with buildings, trees and hedgerows interspersed. A typical UK rural location with a mixture of open areas, some trees and hedgerows and some small buildings would have a ‘roughness class’ of 2. Compare this to open sea that has a roughness class of 0, and cities or dense forest with a roughness class of 4.

Annual mean windspeed increasing with height

It is good practice to measure the wind at the exact location of the proposed wind turbine and at or close to the proposed hub height. We can provide LIDAR systems for a wind measurement campaign, which may be suitable for larger wind turbine projects. For smaller wind turbine sites (up to 1 MW) it is possible to use Computer Fluid Dynamic (CFD) based wind resource models instead of onsite wind measurements. Although these are not as accurate as onsite measurements, they are generally accurate enough.”