Unity Wind Ltd
The Flint House, Felbrigg Road, Roughton, NR11 8PA
Telephone: 01263 761471
Email: info@UnityWind.com
Annual Report, March 2010
This is the first Annual Report issued by the company. Although the company was registered in December 2007, the initial work to set up a community wind farm was carried out by the North Norfolk Environment Forum, (NNEF). This included organising the public meeting in April 2007 and accessing our first grant of £15,000 from Eeda.
The grant was used to secure the site with an option agreement and lease, finally agreed on 19 December 2008 and to pay for a grid survey.
Work towards our planning application was delayed by the MOD who needed to upgrade their equipment at the Trimingham Radar station. Until this was accomplished, they would contest our planning application. For two years we had no indication of the likely date. In these circumstances we could not apply for grants to cover the surveys needed for our planning application. However, we researched the companies able to carry these out and obtained quotes for them
We were given a met mast by The Olympic Village in July 2008, but agreed not to put this up in North Walsham in case the MOD delay was extended. We researched other possible sites for our first project.
This report will mainly cover activities, ups and downs, since 8 June 2009, when the MOD agreed to turbines on our site.
Current directors/committee members are:-
Simon Brocklehurst, Peter Crouch, Barry Groom, Roger Hopkinson, Alicia Hull (Company Secretary), Hetty Selwyn (Chairman), Jan Sorrel (Treasurer), David Spencer, John Swindells (Membership and website).
1) Action to measure wind speeds.
We negotiated with Solar Wheel, to install our met mast for shares in the company, rather than direct payment. We are very grateful to them for their support.
The met mast was erected on Friday 23 October 2009. Good wind speeds were recorded for just over five weeks, until the mast was vandalised on Friday 3 December 2009.
We will not have to replace the met mast at North Walsham. By good luck the wind speeds recorded there were so close to those recorded by a met mast at Stalham, that Garrad HJassan, who analyse wind data for banks, have confirmed that we can use the Stalham results for our site. There is a full year’s record from Stalham. We are very grateful to Andy Hilton for giving us permission to use his data.
The met mast was insured and we are still negotiating with Windsor’s for a cash settlement.
2) Negotiating with EDF to lower the cost of grid connections.
A grid survey, paid for by the Eeda grant, resulted in a very high estimate for the grid connection charge, over £600,000. With the help of Norman Lamb, MP, a meeting was held with EDF on 6 October 2009 to see if this figure could be reduced. Barry Groom, who works in the industry negotiated with EDF. It was agreed that EDF would look again when they knew exactly which turbines we were using to see how they could reduce costs; using a thinner cable, a shorter route and possibly closer connections were discussed.
3) Raising money for surveys.
(a) We applied for two grants. One application failed but after prolonged negotiations, we were successful in obtaining £7,500 worth of funding from The NatureSave Trust, in the form of shares, in February 2010. We are very grateful for their support.
The money from this grant will partially cover the costs of an ecological survey. Unfortunately we heard on 2 February 2010 that the cost of this survey has risen dramatically from that quoted in 2007, £7,634.44 to £13,844.09, as apparently the guidelines for these surveys have changed considerably.
We are negotiating to see if any particular works can be conducted by ourselves to lower the cost. Otherwise this survey will swallow up most of our available funds, including the insurance money. It will be started very soon.
(b) We are in the early stages of applying for a community loan to cover the remaining surveys. However, for this we need to know exact details of the turbines we will buy and their positions. It is for this reason we are holding public exhibitions to consult local people about their preferences.
An exhibition has been organised at Paston Sixth Form College for the week of 22 February.
4) Membership
During this year we have appealed for local people to join Unity Wind, but have suggested they invest only as much as they can afford to lose until planning permission is certain. To date we have 22 members.
Alicia Hull Hetty Selwyn
Company Secretary Chairman 21 February 2010