“High winds undoubtedly caused problems for many people in December but for farmers who have installed turbines the silver lining proved to be record incomes from electricity generation and big savings on power bills too,” said Steve Milner, managing director of Earthmill.
“New data clearly highlights the benefits of diversification to farmers with land for small, farm- scale turbines.”
Earthmill says its own data shows that the company’s fleet of over 100 turbines sited on UK farms generated 2668 MWh of electricity in December, enough power to supply a town of 9,600 homes for 30 days or 800 homes for a whole year.
“As well as generating power worth over £600,000 in just one month, the turbines we manage also attracted discounts on electricity bills worth more than £200,000, equivalent to an average of £2,000 per farm in December alone,” added Mr Milner.
“Whilst there will always be sceptics about the viability of wind power, the new technology used by our turbines is really helping to further increase their efficiency – a fact supported by December’s output figures. Across the UK, wind power supplied 10 per cent of the country’s supply electricity during December, a record month for renewable energy generation and our farmers played their part and boosted their revenues as a result.
“Of course, December was a very windy month and that swells the generation figures somewhat, but typical monthly electricity outputs are between 50 per cent and 75 per cent of these levels, making turbines highly productive on UK farms which are consistently windy.”