Wind Farm Blows Cash for Moray Community Broadband Upgrade
Faster broadband speeds could be on their way to neglected parts of Finderne in Moray (Scotland) after the local Finderne Development Trust (FDT), which is set to receive £138,000 per year from the developers of the Logie Wind Farm (Hill of Glaschyle Renewables LLP), confirmed a tentative proposal.
The wind farm itself was built in partnership between Logie Estate and Muirden Energy and was commissioned in 2017. The farm appears to consist of one 55kW turbine (early test) and this has more recently been joined by twelve 2.3MW turbines.
Finderne covers the small settlements of Rafford, Easter Lawrenceton, Dunphail, Edinkillie, Logie, Cathay, Altyre, Burgie, Blairs, Blervie, Brodieshill, Relugas, Glenerney and Braemoray. Under the new proposal some of the funding from the wind farm could be used to improve broadband connectivity in at least part of this area.
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Chris Piper, FDT Inaugural Chairman, said (Press and Journal):
“We are focused on delivering long term projects that address rural challenges. The lack of availability of adequate broadband within Finderne is a key example.”
Local residents have already expressed their support for this proposal via a recent survey and the next step will be to appoint a development manager in order to create a detailed plan. At present there doesn’t appear to be much information on what may or may not be considered, although the funding is likely to be spent on other things too.
It’s worth pointing out that the state aid supported Digital Scotland project has already worked with Openreach (BT) to extend their Fibre-to-the-Cabinet (FTTC / VDSL2) network into other parts of Moray, such as Clochan, Longmorn, Rothes, Rothiemay, Elgin, Buckie, Forres and Keith.
Mark is a professional technology writer, IT consultant and computer engineer from Dorset (England), he also founded ISPreview in 1999 and enjoys analysing the latest telecoms and broadband developments. Find me on X (Twitter), Mastodon, Facebook, BlueSky, Threads.net and Linkedin.
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It’s great that wind turbines are being used to power more tech.
What powers the broadband service when the wind isn’t blowing?
I think this is more to raise the money to put it in rather than power it? In either case it’s awesome and gives a good income to invest it etc
Consumers pay for it through their electricity bills which are higher as a result of the obligation to buy power from renewables.
Tosh – I pay less on my new supplier who use wind farms than I did when I was with one who didn’t
if you call 5p/Kwh overnight and 11p in the day expensive that is.. with the whole bill being billed as an average of 6.6pkWh so this month £33.41 for 468kWh used
I don’t personally and long may they continue
@Pete
“…subsidies to fund green electricity projects such as wind and solar farms are paid for through levies on consumer energy bills in the UK. Official government estimates indicate that these subsidies cost a typical household £68 a year in 2014, or 5 percent on an annual energy bill of £1,369. They are expected to increase to £141 a year in 2020, or 11 percent of a bill, and £226 by 2030, or 15 percent of a bill.”
http://www.globalenergyworld.com/news/16580/uk_getting_wise_to_renewable_subsidies.htm
I’m not entirely sure why the author of the article felt the need to list towns in moray that the general roll out funded, you could well have listed every town city or village covered by the bduk scheme. This appears to be another case of self funding or do without.
Good news for local residents that at least someone has the will to provide a service when the government and network providers don’t want to.
Typo on ‘express’.
So does Dufftown and Parkmore not exist ? Because our internet is rubbish, often slow and looses connection!!!
This is an incredibly rural area so good to see it getting connected.
EE recently put up an ESN mast south of here to cover the road, but even this is backhauled by satellite, last time I checked.