CLASHINDARROCH AND AULTMORE WIND FARMS

Stephenson Halliday was commissioned to prepare the landscape and visual assessment for two large-scale wind farms at Clashindarroch, Aberdeenshire and Aultmore in Moray, north-east Scotland.

The Clashindarroch site is located in an extensive area of coniferous woodland, south of Huntly. The scheme comprises 47 no. 1.75MW turbines, giving a potential installed capacity of 82MW which would make this one of the largest wind farms in the UK.

The Aultmore site also lies on Forest Enterprise land some 5 kilometres south of Buckie, Moray. The proposed site at Aultmore comprises some 30 no. 1.8MW turbines, giving an installed capacity of 54MW.

The scope of work for both sites has involved comprehensive landscape and visual assessment including advice on layout of the turbines, design of forestry operations to minimise potential landscape and visual effects and consideration of anticipated cumulative effects. The visualisations for both wind farms involved accurately illustrating the effects of the wind farm as well as the extensive forest felling. The applications for both wind farm developments were submitted in 2003 and the Clashindarroch scheme went to Public Inquiry in 2006 where we revised the visualisations for the Inquiry.

Client: Amec Wind Energy