State-sponsored forestry company Coillte Teoranta has agreed with two power companies to develop a wind power project in County Galway that will be one of the biggest of its kind in Ireland.
Coillte will build the wind 105-megawatt wind arm on the Cloosh Valley on its own land near the village of Moycullen with Finavera Renewables and Scottish and Southern Energy, a major British company which owns over 2,300 MW of renewable energy capacity.
Under a codevelopment agreement, Coillte and Scottish and Southern (LSE:
SSE
) will each hold a 45 percent stake in the project, while Finavera will hold 10 percent. Finavera (TSXV:
FVR
) is a development-stage company which builds wind power projects mainly in Canada.
Coillte has secured permission for the first phase of the project, which involves 22 wind turbines to produce 50 MW of electricity, enough to power 30,000 homes.
Project developers say County Galway in western Ireland attract winds that top 7.5 meters to 8 meters per second, way above the minimum wind speeds required to drive a 50-meter-high wind turbine at 6.4 meters to 7 meters per second.
However, the Irish Wind Energy Association said Galway currently only has 72.64 MW of wind power. Donegal owns the largest wind energy capacity with over 264 MW, followed by the counties Cork and Kerry with 253 MW and 224 MW respectively.
“We identified the potential of the Cloosh Valley site as part of our long-term strategy to manage our assets in a sustainable way and to deliver on key national policy objectives,” said David Gunning, chief executive officer of Coillte.
Coillte is a commercial company operating in forestry, land-based businesses, renewable energy and panel products. It owns over 445,000 hectares of land, about 7 percent of the land cover of Ireland.
