In the light of the Conservative UK Government's recent axing of new wind farms' subsidies (The removal of ROCs and LECs) and the corresponding sudden drop in the number of new applications, I wondered how a new TGO Challenger might go about planning a wind farm-free route across Scotland for 2017.
Just over two years ago, I wrote a piece titled "Planning a wind farm-free TGO Challenge 2015." I would encourage you to take a moment to refresh your memory. It was quite a popular post, with almost three thousand visits. Of course, there have been quite a few new wind farms that have been approved, or are under construction or have been completed in the years since I wrote that piece.
The simplest way for a new Challenger to plan a route that avoids wind farms is to have the information available on a map. Of course the SNP Scottish Government, whose policy it is to have wind farms plastering the Highlands, do not provide such a beast. They certainly do not want the full horror of the carnage to be easily available to the public, do they?
There has been a really good effort to log the position of wind farms (and a host of other renewables as well) for the whole of the UK, and THIS MAP shows the wind farms, but only provides an indication of the location and not in relation to landforms, paths and tracks etc, that a walker needs to plan a route. It also requires a subscription, but after spending an hour trying to subscribe, unsuccessfully, I gave up.
So, I set out to find wind farm maps that cover the TGO Challenge's bounds. Most of the Challenge area is covered by the following planning authorities:
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| MAP NICKED FROM WIKIPEDIA |
In the north & west: Highland (20)
In the northeast: Moray (19)
In the east: Aberdeenshire (17)
In the east: Angus (16)
In the southeast: Perth & Kinross (23)
In the southwest: Argyll & Bute (22)
So I went to each of the Councils' websites to see if I could find current maps of the status of wind farms in their areas, ie., wind farms being scoped, in planning, approved, in construction or built. Presumably because resources are very stretched, not all the councils have such maps. But where they do I have included them in this piece.
Here is what I have found so far:
HIGHLAND:
After a few years of dreadful inactivity, Highland Council now has a pretty good online resource, albeit missing the vital information of wind farms that are being scoped by developers.
This is what their online map looks like for a chunk of the Challenge area:
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| CLICK TO ENLARGE |
You can zoom in and click on each wind farm to get the location and size of every turbine, in relation to the surrounding area at 1:50k scale O.S. mapping.
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| CLICK TO ENLARGE |
You certainly would not want to plan a route up the track following the River E, would you? It runs right through the centre of Corriegarth Wind Farm. I can tell you from personal experience, it was utterly ghastly.
To summarize: The Highland Council interactive map is very good, although it sorely needs scoped wind farms to be included. It is ten months out of date; the last update being January 2016. It can be found by clicking:
Next up?
MORAY:
Moray Council's map is not good. In fact, it's pretty poor: It is a downloadable pdf that shows the approximate location of each wind farm, in two versions: Turbines up to 50m in height and turbines over 50m. Each location is numbered and there are tables below the map that give details of each wind farm.
It looks like this:
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However, Moray do show wind farms that are being scoped by developers. It can be found by clicking :
Next up?
ABERDEENSHIRE:
What can I say? I couldn't find anything on Aberdeenshire's website. Now, it may be that I'm looking in the wrong place, and if so, please could someone correct me. But I believe this is pretty poor. But perhaps the following interactive map provided by "Concerned about Wind Turbines in Aberdeenshire" explains why there is no map. It is deeply shocking:
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| SCREENGRAB OF TURBINES OVER 50M HIGH: CLICK TO ENLARGE |
Every single turbine is located on excellent O.S. mapping. This is a credit to whoever built this map. It can be found by clicking:
Next up?
ANGUS:
Now then. I may be wrong, but I have searched high and low for a map showing wind farms in Angus on the Council website. But there is nothing. At all. They do, however, have a downloadable pdf on where developers are welcome to apply for planning permission for wind farms.
This is deeply shameful. If anyone can correct me on this, please let me know in the comments section and I will amend the post. In this area I would use the very first resource I mentioned earlier. Click:
Next up?
PERTH & KINROSS:
Another excellent map, from the Perth & Kinross Council website However, it does not show wind farms that are being scoped by developers.
It looks like this:
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It can be found by clicking:
And lastly:
ARGYLL AND BUTE:
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| CLICK TO ENLARGE |
At first glance, this interactive map looks promising, but when you come to click on the individual wind farms you realise that the map is like a cheap chocolate Easter Egg: Beautifully presented, but sod all inside - not even a bag of Smarties. There is precious little information on the wind farms or the position of turbines. If it isn't on the O.S. map's own information, it's unlikely to be on this web-map. It shows the likely location only. Still, I suppose it's better than nothing. It can be found by clicking:
So there you have it. If you want to plot a route across Scotland that avoids the worst of the wind farms, you're going to have your work cut out, but this post should be of help.
Good luck with your planning. I hope to see you on the walk if we are lucky in the draw for places.
NOTE:
If anyone can find better resources or maps please let me know in the comments section. Thank you.
