A Visit to Two Wind Farms

Last bank holiday weekend in the UK was also my 59th birthday and while holidaying in the superb unspoilt Edwardian seaside town of Southwold, famous for its beach huts and lighthouse, I decided to visit a couple of wind farms. One was Scroby sands, near Great Yarmouth reached by boat from Southwold Harbour, the other an onshore farm of two turbines at the Africa Alive safari park near Lowestoft.

 

Scroby Sands was one of the first of the UK’s first commercial offshore wind farms. Commissioned in March 2004 the 30-turbine wind farm, 3km off the coast has become a popular landmark and tourist attraction. Scroby Sands is a near-perfect place for an offshore wind farm; it has shallow waters and offshore sandbanks, plus relatively high wind speeds yet low waves. Port access and electrical grid connection at Great Yarmouth offers the right infrastructure.

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The offshore wind farm has been taken to heart by locals from East Suffolk and tourists and there are many boats taking visitors to see the turbines… and the seals. Scroby Sands has a thriving seal colony and also little terns, Britain’s second rarest seabird which visits Great Yarmouth’s shores every summer, passing near to the wind farm.

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Each of the 30 turbines has three 40-metre (130 ft) blades rotating around a centre-point some 60 metres (200 ft) above the mean sea level on hollow 4.5 metres (14.8 ft) diameter steel masts, in from 13-to-20-metre (43 to 66 ft) depth of water. The masts are piled up to 30 metres (98 ft) into the sea bed, to provide stability on a substrate of shifting sands. The turbines were manufactured by Danish giant Vestas and each has a power generation capacity of 2Mw.

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It was breathtaking to boat around these majestic giant structures and to see the seals basking on the sandbanks nearby, living in total harmony. The sound of the rotating turbines provided a gentle aural wash which was augmented by the sound of the waves and the occasional barks of the seals.

Later that day I went to Africa Alive safari park where the African animals, including cheetahs, lions, rhinos and giraffes, all roam around their generous enclosures with two turbines rotating in the background. I spoke to a couple of the staff at the park and they both said that when the turbines were rotating, they had noticed that it had a calming effect on the nearby animals! I asked them whether the sound and presence of the turbines bothered them. “Not at all,” one said, “You get so used to them you forget they are there and in any case, we get some of our green energy from them, which is a good thing!

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Southwold and Africa Alive can both be reached from the A12, a two and a half hour’s drive from London.

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