Greenvale AP is one of the UK’s leading potato processors, and the wind farm is located at the company’s fresh potato packing site, near the village of March, Cambridgeshire. The business is involved throughout the supply chain, from growing and packing potatoes through to supplying major supermarkets all over the UK.
Triodos Renewables picked up the project in April 2014 via a long term relationship with an experienced developer. Alongside Dunfermline and Eye, it is our third merchant project – where power is provided directly to an industrial business.
The Acciona AW77-1500 turbine began generating at the very end of November 2014, with its first full month being December 2014. With a site capacity of 1.5MW and good forecast average wind speed, the annual forecast output was 4.5GWh when the turbine was erected, which is enough to power 1,093 UK homes[1] .
A year on, the annual generation was even better than forecast at 4.75GWh, which is enough to power 1,150 UK homes[1] . In fact, power from the turbine has been used to power the Greenvale site itself, so more of the potatoes that end up on supermarket shelves have been processed and packed using renewable energy.
This approach allows a merchant site to manage their energy costs, as well as demonstrate their sustainability credentials against increasingly strict and competitive supply chain criteria, maintaining job security for local people.
2015 was a good year for our Cambridgeshire projects, as we now have three sites up and running, have invested in the local community in Eye and Doddington, and hope to expand our open days to this part of the country in 2016.
You can find out more about the project over on our project page.
