South Uist wind

Developer offers to share grid connection with Storas Uibhist 28/7/10

An islander who plans to build a wind farm on South Uist is offering a way for the community-owned estate to press ahead with its own renewable energy scheme.

Calum Macmillan of Hebridean Energy says he wants to share his 10 megawatt allowance, to export electricity onto the national grid, with the community.

His help could allow landlord Storas Uibhist to fast track its stalled proposals for a three-turbine, 6.9 MW scheme at Lochcarnan on Iochdar crofters’ common grazings. But the Storas has rejected his offer for the last six months he says.

Now a meeting over the row is taking place in South Uist on Thursday between the two local wind farm developers and Alex Morrison of Scottish and Southern Energy (SSE) which runs the grid network.

Calum Macmillan’s brother John is the present vice-chair of Storas Uibhist which bought out the 92,000 acre estate from a English-based sporting syndicate in 2006 for £4.5 million.

The estate’s records show John Macmillan has declared an interest and has been absent from discussions over the issues.

Storas Uibhist’s chairman Angus Macmillan lashed out with furious outbursts against SSE when its belated application failed earlier this year. It maintains a grid offer was later reversed by the energy giant.

The community land owners apparently went against the advice of their own energy consultants four years ago and never applied for a grid connection until only recently. It says it was advised planning permission was required first. In any case Calum Macmillan’s application was already being dealt with before the Storas started thinking seriously about renewable energy.

Though the Lochcarnan turbines are amongst a raft of small scale schemes in the Western Isles given effectively in-principle grid connection dates, all are awaiting firm and finalised offers, which would be dependent upon various conditions. In any case the national Grid could switch off theri turbines if they unstablised the system.

However, Calum Macmillan of Bornish who applied for grid space some years ago for a proposed private venture wind farm says he cannot understand why the Storas will not use part of his booking to quickly progress the community turbines.

For the past six months his offer to split his contracted booking on the electricity system has lain on table he says. He would relinquish part of his grid allowance, which added to spare capacity, would allow the community development to go-ahead.

Mr Macmillan said that Storas Uibhist will be given yet another opportunity to take up a sizeable chunk of his grid availability for its Lochcarnan scheme.

He added: “Storas Uibhist was offered this on 1st February but declined. They wanted me to give up the whole 10MW capacity which has been contracted to me for a number of years and applied for long before the Storas came into existence.”

A spokesperson for SSE said: “We hope to work out a solution from the meeting on Thursday between us and the two parties.

“We will talk about the grid issues and we feel confident a solution will be found.”