Nice earner in Suffolk

[Artic]

A wealthy landowner has admitted he stands to make £80,000 a year by installing a 45 metre wind turbine on his farm, which villagers say will destroy the area.

[Davey]

On Wed, 18 Sep 2013 00:22:29 +0100 Artic

[Adrian]

Then perhaps they should object to the planning application?

"There are around 1,000 people living in the village but only a dozen or so felt strongly enough about my plan to turn up at the special meeting called by the parish council to discuss it."

Clearly some really, really strong feeling in the place.

Oooh, he "stands to make £80k/yr" - from a half-million quid turbine. Before you take into account the land value, the ongoing maintenance etc etc. So mebbe half the raw 16% yield. 8%. Not bad, but not exactly going to set the world alight.

I wonder if there's any relevance in one of the people objecting being an ex-journo?

[Tim Streater]

Objection based on what grounds? That's the trouble. Saying "I object because I don't like it" cuts no ice at all.

[Artic]

Adrian scribbled...

Another city boy who has never heard of 'working the land'. Nothing should be allowed to change from Constable's time - it's all for looking at innit!

A friend has problems beccause he used to fertilise a field he rented with chicken shit. "We can't eat our breakfast outside because of the smell" etc etc. Instead of growing and selling hay, he had to buy it in for his stables, which cut profits and led to him selling up. The field is now unused and covered in thistles.

[charles]

"un-neighbourliness", "changing the street scene", "development in the Green Belt", etc.

[AC]

Country bumpkins resist something new. What a shocker.

What next, a wicker wind turbine? Declaration of witch craft?

[Adrian]

It's only "the trouble" if there are no real grounds other than " But I don't like it..."

And nor should it.

If they don't have any reasonable grounds (and there are plenty they can pick from), then - quite frankly - they can go f*ck 'emselves. Just the same as somebody who wants to object to your conservatory or garage or shed can do if their only reason is " But I don't like it".

Since it appears that only 1.2% of the village even bothered to turn up to the specially arranged parish council meeting to discuss it, that gives an indication of the _real_ feeling, rather than just the vocal minority.

To put that into perspective, there was a planning battle a couple of years ago over change-of-use of some farm buildings near here. I gather

99.5% of the residents of the village objected officially to the planning application.

[Adrian]

ITYM "escape to the country" townies...

[Huge]

[Brian Gaff]

Don't know about destroy the area, but certainly you cannot easily disguise a structure as high as that. So how would he make that kind of money from one turbine and how much is it going to cost up front I wonder. Brian

[The Natural Philosopher]

I had to dig incredibly deep to discover when the parish meeting was to discuss wind turbines...

fewer people attended than councillors and half of them were absent and half of what were left abstained.

It was left to the leader, who we had FORCED to have an online/letter based poll, to report that of the 10% of the community who had bothered to respond to the survey, over 90% were against it.

Only two people out of 900 estimated local residents, actually were in favour of it.

The same council leader who had said a year ago that 'I think most people are pretty much in favour of wind energy actually'

At a subesquent an unrelated planning meeting for a single wind turbine, over 150 people did attend the borough council meeting to watch 'democracy in action and stood there open mouthed as the conservative lead alliance rubber stamped a project that was totally inappropiate, and the planning cmmittee charman sunsequently resigned and moved out of the area.

The spokesman for the objectors spoke in a very low voice,. She ruins an anti wind farm group. She stood as a council officials in the council elections. for the coniservatives. Oh right...

UKIP got 50 new members that day.

The point is these things are never announced unless some local people who are on the ball get wind of it.

The most common response is 'we trusted them, we never knew it was even happening till it was too late'

[The Natural Philosopher]

From a lefaet about a similar development..

"This turbine falls into the 100?500kW band and will attract 18.4p per kW hour for generating, plus 4.64p per kW hour for selling it to the electricity supplier. Assuming a 20% load factor, the tariff for a year paid to the owner will be £161,184. On top of that, he will receive £40,646 for any electricity generated, which is about its current market value. The £161,184 will be added to other people's electricity bills. Not enough people know that."

cost of a 500KW turbine is around half a mill.

O & M costs are abut 15% and the depreciation can be taken linearly over say 10 years.

so total annualised costs are 50k depreciation plus 75k maintenance,

say 125k. total income is 161k so a net profit of 36k for doing nothing but pissing other people off.

£36k one a capex of £500k is 7.2%, ROI which if you got a 'green loan' to finance it well above zero.

If you paid for it out of your own pockets, 7.2% is better than any regular investment,

After ten year total income will be 1.6 million for a cost base of 1,25 million

and if you play your cards right, and get a three year warranty, O&M costs will be sod all in the first three years.

so adding another £225k to the profits.

[Dave Liquorice]

Further down the article it says the dozen or so that did turn up were all aga "Our task was to consider the points before making a recommendation to the district council and we decided six vote to one against the application."

The minutes of the meeting are available online. There were 15 members of the public present, three apologies. The proposed windmill has a hub height of 30 m, 15 m blades and 250 kW rating.

[charles]

We usually have about half a dozen members of the public at our meetings (last night it was 7) in a village with 1100 households. Our next door parish with around 1700 households rarely has any public. But these public are not part of the meeting, although (as Chairman) I have an open session at 9pm when questions may be asked. Any lobbying is usually carried out by email rather than at the meeting,

[The Other Mike]

According to my financial advisor the only way to get a better return on your money is to import and distribute Colombian marching powder.

[Matty F]

Perhaps they are unaware of the noise that wind turbines make all night. I suppose it will be too late for them to do anything about that after the tu rbines are running. I would say that every landowner within 2 kilometres of a wind turbine shou ld be compensated for the loss of value of his land - let's say a payment o f 25% of the value of his land should be allowed for in the costings of the wind turbines.