Our turbine contributes to community funds for 2 schools: Alyth School and Isla Primary School. Earlier in the year we made our first payment of £1000 to Isla Primary and they have kindly sent us a report:

Can you please pass on Isla Primary school’s gratitude for the generous donation of £1000.  We plan to purchase a poly tunnel and install an outdoor tap so that the children can grow their own fruit and vegetables.    When we have the poly tunnel we will send a photograph of the purchase with thanks from the pupils.

This is a fantastic start  – exactly the sort of thing we hoped for when we first set up the co-operative. We’ll share the photos as soon as the tunnel is in place and we’re really looking forward to continue supporting Isla Primary in future

We were delighted to make our first community fund payment to Alyth school last week. We’ve committed to pay £2,500 per year to the school for 20 years, and it was great to be able to make the first payment after only a few months of operation. The turbine has been generating strongly – May was windy for the time of year and is the record month to date. The co-operative will also be paying a community fund to the nearby Glen Isla school, to start next year.

We’re pleased to see we have started a precedent – Heartland Community Wind in Aberfeldy will also have a community fund aimed at young people – in their case to help students from the Loch Tay area access Perth College UHI. We wish them the best in their share offer which has a month to go.

A collective hurrah went up today from all 200 Wester Derry Wind Co-op members as the turbine is now fully operational, connected to the grid, and generating. We’re seeing a steady southwesterly and the turbine is spinning happily.

Blades on, just as the snows arrive… all the electricals are being sorted and we ought to be fully plugged in next week

Lots of progress with foundations on site nearly complete. Concrete will then cure for a period before turbine goes up

Our temporary access track is in place – as you can see it is a pretty solid trackway. It will stay there while we complete current foundation works and until we bring the turbines up in a few weeks time. Meanwhile, we are still getting applications for shares  – there are still some available as previously advertised  – about half of these have been taken up within the last few weeks.

We’re very pleased to say we’ve now received the final planning permission for the substation and we’re busy preparing to install the turbine. Some of the cable runs are complete and we’re now working on turbine foundations.

The share offer was fully subscribed back in August but we do still have some shares available!

How is this possible?  A small group of our subscribers are keen on supporting new wind co-ops in Scotland in general. Given that there are some more projects in the pipeline elsewhere in the country and more in need of brave early-stage members, they are willing to release part of their (as yet unissued) share allocations which are now available to be taken up by anybody who would like to join this co-op.

Please see the share offer document available here – the end date has changed but the offer is exactly the same and you can use the same application form.

We’ll keep the offer open while there are still shares available – we anticipate that these will sell out by the time the turbine is up and running in December.

We’ve been working hard to get everything in place for the turbine to be installed. We’ve done some trenching to put the cable in place and work will commence on the foundation within the next few weeks. We’re being held up a little by the delay in planning for our substation – the small box we need to house the equipment that connects the turbine to the grid. This does not stop us putting up the turbine of course but it’s a little frustrating as the turbine itself has had planning permission for a long time. If you’d like to support our application you can do so here: Angus Council Planning Portal .

Our share offer closes at midnight tonight. It will take a while to collate the applications from various sources (the post office chose today not to deliver to this entire building!) and reconcile the bank accounts but it looks like all applicants will get their full allocation – we will be making a more complete announcement next week. One thing we can reaffirm is that the project does have the funds it need to continue, so the show is most definitely on the road. Thank you all 175-ish of our soon-to-be members.

Shares in Wester Derry Wind Co-op are still available for one week more. To the best of our knowledge it’s the only current opportunity for normal people (who are not hotshot investors or banks!) to own part of a wind turbine in Scotland and to be part of the clean energy revolution in this country.  There are currently around 240,000 shares left – so please send in your applications if you’d like to join us.