About Coreen Hill Windfarm Project

Windfarm developers, EDF and Force 9 Energy, have submitted (16 October 2023) to the Energy Consents Unit (ECU) of the Scottish Government a scoping request relevant to the proposed development of a windfarm on the Correen Hills immediately alongside the road over the Suie Hill.

ECU00004951.

In layman's terms a scoping request is a request to approve the scope of studies required prior to a possible planning application for this development.

An Opinion on behalf of the Scottish Minsters has subsequently been posted (18 December 2024) which includes details of further scopes as required by the Scottish Ministers based upon feed-back from consultees"

You can see the development application on the ECU application here

Latest information on the development plans can be found on the Force 9 Energy website and on the dedicated EDF/Force 9 site

The proposal as it stands on the Force 9 website is for "Up to 14 turbines which will be up to 200m to blade tip with an installed capacity up to 100MW.....powering up to 107,000 homes" and providing a benefit of around £500,000 to the community.  

On the combined site they state that the application is for "Up to ten turbines, eight with a proposed height of up to 200m to blade tip, and two with a height of up to 180m to blade tip [with] Up to approximately 72MW of renewable electricity generated [and] Enough renewable electricity to power [to] over 74,000* Homes a Year. and a potential community benefit of £360,000.

In addition, there is a 50 MW battery farm proposed for the development. Power may be exported north via an undisclosed route and method.

The area currently identified covers approximately 950 hectares of forest and peatland to the west of the Suie Hill road, next to the Suie Hill car park. For perspective each turbine will be 25% taller than the Blackpool tower, and just 7m shorter than the pillars that support the new bridge over the Forth, the Queensferry crossing (measured from high-tide level).

The turbines will be distributed across this peatland with the highest base currently located at approximately 445m above sea level. The tips of the blades of this turbine will be more than 80 m higher than the nearby archeologically important site at the summit of Tap O’Noth. Several of the turbines are proposed to be within 2km of more than 20 local residences and at least one turbine being approximately 300m away from the Tap O’Noth road.

The area is presently a well-known, iconic local beauty spot, with a seated scenic outlook alongside the road overlooking the Cabrach and Tap o’Noth. It is popular with, and is heavily used by ramblers, mountain bikers, dog walkers, ornithologists, cross country skiers etc. as a local recreational amenity. The Suie Hill car park, just to the east of the road, is the end point for the Gordon Way walking trail.  The construction of this development, if approved, will take about 2 years, during which time large sections of the hill will no longer be available for the public amenity.

It is likely that properties that have private water supplies fed from the hill will have their supplies disrupted during this period. In other developments some of these supplies have been permanently affected.  New access roads across nearby farm land will be required, with local

roads being closed for periods to allow access to the developers. These new roads will likely remain in place for the 30-year life of the construction, operation and decommissioning of the windfarm.

Oversized loads will bring the machinery in during the construction programme and during future maintenance and repair works.  Future recreational use will be subject to additional precautions /

restrictions as a result of the turbines and facilities located on the hill.  There are safety risks posed by blade failure (affecting residences up to 2km from nearest turbine) and ice-throw (affecting public areas up to 500m from nearest turbine).

The possible impact of this development on ornithology, flora and fauna is currently not publicly available. The National Planning Framework 4 (NPF4) now requests that a 10% improvement in biodiversity should be included in windfarm plans. An area for Land Management is included

in this proposal.

There are academic papers where the possibility of wind turbines triggering photosensitivity-epilepsy seizures has been identified, although this is more likely to be the case for the smaller, faster rotating, turbines.

The impact of noise on local residences or the use of the amenity areas is currently unknown. A report, ETSU R97, dating from 1996 offers advice/guidance to windfarm developers. This report did not consider the installation of turbines as large as those being proposed and does not address the issues of amplitude modulation (the whooshing sound generated as the blades pass the tower).

The UK Government Department, BEIS, commissioned a review of ETSU R97. This review, published in 2023, concluded that “Since 1996 the technology has advanced, new research has been undertaken and understanding of wind turbine sound has progressed.”, and “The report

recommends areas of the ETSU-R-97 guidance that would benefit from being updated, and provides recommendations for further evidence needed to support those updates. 

These include revisiting the framework of noise limits and establishing new guidance to support

assessment and control of the potential impact of amplitude modulation”.