RE-POWERING
FEATURE SPONSOR
GUIDANCE ON RE-POWERING WINDFARMS
From 2025 onwards, the number of ‘maturing’ windfarms across the United Kingdom will increase – on paper, re-powering makes good sense CONSENT
It provides an opportunity to make better use of good sites. Ageing turbines are likely to have operation and maintenance issues. New turbines will have increased performance. There is the potential to improve the quality and reliability of exported power and existing sites will have embedded infrastructure.
DIFFICULTIES However, the difficulties of re-powering are consistently underestimated by developers. In land law terms, a new option to lease is likely to be needed. Operators will seek to maintain production. The repowered farm may well be owned and operated by someone different and rights to the existing lease area will need to be negotiated. Decommissioning obligations in the lease will need to accommodate the proposed re-powering.
In planning terms, any repowered windfarm will need consent. Environmental Impact Assessment is likely to be required for what are going to be taller turbines. Decommissioning obligations in the original permission mean that the existing farm does not create a brownfield site which makes it easy. Re-powering creates a new project and not a continuation of the old one. Councils will require that the baseline for assessment is a hypothetical, cleared site. Because that greenfield site does not exist on the ground, setting the parameters for assessment may be tricky. The situation gets even more complicated if there has been an extension with a different intermediate lifespan.
POSSIBLE HOSTILITIES Contrary to developer expectation, a local community may feel that it
has done its bit and be hostile to re-powering. A previously willing landowner may be put under tremendous pressure to take the turbines away, as was no doubt promised.
Development plan policies and national policy, certainly in England, will have hardened against the grant of consent. Grid connection has to be secured and early grid connection agreements are not wide enough to include re-powering. Transport routes designed for smaller turbines will have to be reassessed for taller machines.
Re-powering is good and is the responsible way forward but it is not the “shoo-in” that developers believe.
Squire Patten Boggs
66
www.windenergynetwork.co.uk
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