Sitting at the top of Scotland with 22,000 inhabitants, Shetland receives more than its share of wind, making its small wind farm of 5 turbines, including Betsy, a 660kw turbine believed to be the world’s most efficient wind turbine in existence, very well placed.
Betsy reaches outputs of between 52 and 59% of the potential maximum output for the turbine; one reason why it is difficult to argue against the effectiveness of a full scale wind farm were it to be approved and built on Shetland. Not everybody is happy with the proposals for the Viking wind farm however. Although the proposed development could provide 20% of the energy needed to power Scotland, islanders have expressed concern about the detrimental effect the building of the site, including access roads and quarries, would have on the island’s environment.
The RSPB have carried out a huge amount of research into the effects of wind farms on bird populations in the past few years. Although their stance was originally that on-shore wind farms were bad in general, they have now started to embrace the possibility of erecting turbines on specific sites.