On a clear January morning, an icy wind cuts across the top deck of a car ferry heading to Gigha.
Four people are looking pensively across the sea towards the southern part of the island. They are a contingent from the Channel Island of Alderney’s electricity supplier who have travelled to Gigha to find out how the island has embraced renewable technology with its wind turbines.
“The islanders call them the Dancing Ladies,” says the group’s leader, in admiration.
Alderney Electricity Limited’s managing director James Lancaster is on a fact-finding mission. His company is the island’s principal energy provider, which is totally reliant on imported diesel to generate electricity. It will soon consult with the people of Alderney on plans to install wind turbines and a solar array to provide about a third of the island’s power from renewable energy.
Alderney is self-governed and the third largest of the Channel Islands. It is smaller than Gigha at three miles long and one and-a-half miles wide and has a population of approximately 2,000.
Before meeting representatives from Gigha’s trust, the group, including systems architect Jon Stokes, consenting and planning expert Ed Jessamine and young film-maker from Alderney, Cam Cairnduff, decided to take a look at the wind turbines up close.
Mr Stokes, who has been instrumental in creating one of the world’s most advanced electricity grids on Alderney, was interested to see the technical side of how things operate on Gigha “and the lessons that can be learned for Alderney".
“We’ve got lots of ideas, ways and how we’ve implemented them, but there’s always a different way of doing things,” he said.
The group drove south to find only one of the turbines moving. They were told later this was because the other three turbines are undergoing or awaiting maintenance to be carried out by engineers from the mainland. But they were immediately struck by how quiet the turbine was. The sound of the turning blades was drowned out by the wind and they could comfortably talk to each other as they stood next to the tower.
Mr Lancaster explained to the group that the power from the turbines is converted to 11,000 volts and gets fed into the local grid. Gigha uses some of the power, but the turbines produce more than the island needs, so most of it goes back to the mainland through an undersea cable and the island gets paid for that electricity – to bring money into the economy.
“I think a lot [of the visit’s purpose] is understanding why the community here wants to do this,” said Mr Jessamine.
“Obviously the island has great wind resource, so there’s a lot of logic behind it and we need to look from that perspective. But [we need] to also understand the emotional element. It’s how you feel about things very often – and that’s important – not just to understand the technology but also the emotional attachment.”
This was something which Andy Clements from the Isle of Gigha Heritage Trust (IGHT) explained later, during the meeting.
“When we went for a vote for the turbines, it was 100 per cent yes,” he said, adding that one of reasons the islanders came on-board with the wind farm idea in 2004 was that they were small wind turbines.
“Everyone saw the benefit in them,” he said. “I think when people see the benefit of community wind turbines, it pays off.”
IGHT business development manager Jane Millar said she thinks the visual impact of the wind turbines wasn’t enough of a con to outweigh the pros of the financial return that they were going to create for the people.
“And it hasn’t scarred the landscape,” she added, but she did think there would be resistance if they looked to increase the number of wind turbines.
“If we went back to the community now and said we wanted to put an additional four turbines up, I think we’d get rejections. But we’re looking at taking down three and putting up two slightly larger turbines, but they will blend in and produce more electricity.”
Mostly everyone spoken to on the island during the visit seemed supportive of their ‘Dancing Ladies’. Even one dog walker, who made it quite clear he didn’t want to be filmed, was ambivalent about the wind turbines. “They don’t bother me,” was his reaction.
Others mentioned that they “don’t really notice the turbines” and that they are just part of the landscape.
One of the ferry’s crew, who lives on Gigha, summed up the general feeling about the wind turbines, saying: “They do their job, I do mine.”
It could be argued that the wind farm’s presence has made his job possible, seeing as how the population has doubled since the turbines went up.
Alderney Electricity’s James Lancaster said the visit to Gigha was about trying to give the people of Alderney some confidence that there are other communities who have seen the potential benefits of a move to self-sufficient renewable energy and have allowed it to happen.
If Mr Lancaster needs a prime example of community engagement during the public consultations, he can look no further than the event that took place on Gigha one weekend 20 years ago, as the community gathered in a field with mops and buckets to wash the wind turbine blades that had just arrived.
“People were lining the road as the turbines came off the ferry,” said Mr Clements.
“The blades had a lot of road grime on them, so we had a community day that weekend to clean them. Some of them came down, had a picnic, and cleaned them. It was just a great day, it really was.”
Gigha’s ‘Wash the Windmills Day’ in 2004 is an example of a small community embracing renewable energy, literally hands-on.
Whether the people of Alderney will follow Gigha in embracing renewable energy remains to be seen.
Alderney Electricity is 80 per cent owned by the island’s government, and Mr Lancaster said it was interesting to see the parallels with Alderney and Gigha around governance and government.
“While the company that runs Gigha was set up for the community, it’s set into the role of governance, so people in the community know it’s there for them and find it easy to rail against what the trust is actually doing,” said Mr Clements. “So, it was interesting to see the positives and parallels with Alderney.
“I found the meeting with the Alderney reps very positive and very helpful. I think, for them, it was beneficial as well; I didn’t expect to get quite so much back from them. But this is a good thing about community engagement.
“If we can share what we’ve done, it is really good and these types of visits are important and are always worthwhile.”
Colin Leach is a freelance journalist and editor who lives on the Kintyre peninsula.
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