Recently Ireland’s oldest windfarm, the 6.45-megawatt (MW) Bellacorick facility which began operation in 1992, was decommissioned. Bellacorick consisted of 21 wind turbines which generated enough electricity to power 4,500 households.
Replacing Bellacorick is the Oweninny Wind Farm, already the largest onshore wind farm in Ireland. The new facility already has a capacity of 192 MW and will be adding another 18 turbines which will have more capacity than the original 21 Bellacorick turbines.
The new turbines are much taller than the turbines being replaced with a height of up to 200 meters compared to the tallest height of 53 metres at Bellacorick.
According to this article from Renew Energy, the turbine blades from Bellacorick will be “recycled by Armagh-based Plaswire and transformed into products used in construction boards, panels, fencing, walkways and kerbs." This means that the used turbines can avoid ending up in landfill.
Renewables - both solar and wind - are one of the positive stories from the fight against climate change and the evolution from Bellacorick to Oweninny demonstrates the advances in wind technology.