Denbighshire Wind Farm Grants to Support Faster Broadband

The Brenig Wind Farm – Llyn Brenig – in Denbighshire (North Wales, UK) has begun to accept bids for a new community benefit fund, which will offer £147,200 per annum in total for up to 25 years to help support community projects for improved rural transport, social services and faster broadband connectivity etc.

The onshore wind farm itself, which consists of 16 turbines (each generating up to 2.35MW for a total installed capacity of 37.6MW) built by Jones Bros Construction, is located within Community Council area of Nantglyn (here) and was funded by Chinese energy firm CGN Europe Energy.

As part of that deployment the new farm agreed to pay a community benefit fund (currently about £3915/MW), which equates to £147,200 per annum in total for up to 25 years and this money will be made available to projects within a 15km radius of the site. The farm itself was only recently completed and bids are now being taken for the fund.

All of this is being handled by the Cadwyn Clwyd rural development agency, which intends to offer grants worth between £10,000 to £50,000 to help related community projects.

Lowri Owain, Cadwyn Clwyd Manager, said (the free press):

“The fund is flexible and can support projects such as community transport, access to services, support for community social activities, digital inclusion such as broadband coverage, developing and supporting social enterprises for example a community shop or community pub, community led tourism projects, sports clubs and recreational activities and so on.”

At this stage no specific project awards have been announced, although it’s by no means the first wind farm to consider putting money toward improvements for rural broadband connectivity. For example, a number of similar wind farms and associated grants in Scotland have already been used to fund upgrades to internet connectivity (here and here).