wind turbines

Building on Birmingham and the Custard Factory’s renowned entrepreneurial heritage, a Birmingham-based renewable energy developer has expanded from four permanent employeesto fourteen in the past 9 months.

Fine Energy Limited, was established in Moseley in July 2010 as a developer of renewable energy projects, primarily wind and hydro energy. By maintaining a responsive approach to market conditions the company has created 16 jobs since its inception and is seeing enquiries increase by between 62 – 130% each month.

The company offers a land rental model for renewable energy projects – it pays businesses and landowners for siting wind and hydro projects on their land. It also identifies and establishes renewables opportunities.

Now with offices in the Custard Factory, Birmingham and Edinburgh, the Fine Energy team are screening large numbers of sites for public and private sector organisations. Once sites are identified Fine Energy carry out initial feasibility checks relating to wind speed, grid connection and land ownership. Planning and grid connection applications are then made for each site and, if successful, the firm takes care of wind turbine installation and maintenance over a 20 year period.

Graham Hygate, founder and managing director said: “As well as earning an assured rent for 20 years with no investment required, landowners benefit from a yield-dependent bonus, and can reduce their carbon footprint and energy costs. With its abundance of wind resource the

UK is a natural home for wind power. Small scale ‘Distributed Energy’ projects such as ours, with usually one or two turbines on towers of heights around 25m, supported by the Feed-in Tariff, provide the right compromise between energy yield and visual impact”. 

Smaller-scale renewable energy developments connect into the local electricity distribution network rather than into the high-voltage transmission network operated by National Grid; this means that the energy they produce can be used locally, for example on-site energy costs can be lowered. The parallel buying groceries from a local farmers’ market is a good one, with reduced electrical losses being analogous to fewer food miles.

In the UK’s complex local planning environment small scale distributed energy projects must surely be part of the strategy to achieve this small island’s ambitious carbon reduction targets. 

www.fineenergy.co.uk

212 Zellig Building, The Custard Factory, 

Birmingham B9 4AA

0121 449 4443    07795 608002

Twitter @fineenergy