BP AND EnBW have recently submitted their Environmental Impact Assessment scoping request to the Planning Inspectorate and Natural Resources Wales for the Mona Offshore Windfarm.
The proposed wind farm has a proposed capacity of 1.5 gigawatts, comprised of up to 107 individual turbines, and will be located approximately 15 miles off the North Wales coast.
This is positive news for the UK’s energy supply situation, but will cause concern for individual land and property owners potentially impacted by this additional scheme in an area already significantly affected by new infrastructure proposals.
As well as wind turbines off the coast, Mona will require new electricity cables and a substation for transportation of the power generated from the turbines into the existing onshore transmission network.
READ MORE:
Denbighshire Council to increase housing stock
Police investigating following alert to extortion incident in Rhyl
Glan Clwyd has worst A&E waiting times in Wales
While no specific routing options have been provided at this scoping stage a new connection to the national grid is proposed at the existing Bodelwyddan sub-station, with cables coming onshore somewhere between Abergele and Rhyl.
RWE has recently had its application for the Awel Y Mor project accepted by the Planning Inspectorate.
Awel Y Mor has the same export cable landfall and a grid connection point at Bodelwyddan.
Richard Fearnall, from specialist property consultants Wilson Fearnall, is advising all land and property owners who might be contacted by the developers of either project to take specialist advice and engage with the relevant parties at an early stage.
Mr Fearnall said: “Whilst we all broadly encourage and support the development of clean, green energy generation proposals, some individual land, property and business owners are going to experience a range of localised disturbance and impacts during the construction and operational phases of these new developments.
“This area of North Wales is becoming heavily congested with new infrastructure, which will cause increasing tensions between individual developers and the public; and between developers.
“When permission is granted for these projects to proceed, there will be long periods of construction and reinstatement works required.
“Developers will be provided with compulsory powers to acquire the land and property rights required to build and operate the project.
“The sooner that potentially affected parties take advice and engage with developers, the more likely that concerns and issues will be acknowledged and addressed.”
Comments: Our rules
We want our comments to be a lively and valuable part of our community - a place where readers can debate and engage with the most important local issues. The ability to comment on our stories is a privilege, not a right, however, and that privilege may be withdrawn if it is abused or misused.
Please report any comments that break our rules.
Read the rules here