Well here we are again, with another couple of fabulous milestones under our belt! We had first of all, a well attended community presentation evening in Shawbost Old School Centre on Thursday 27th March with lots of searching and interesting questions for directors, HICEC officials and Atmos Consultants, from the people who attended. The evening then developed into more of a social occassion with tea, coffee and loads of biscuits on offer, the community had the opportunity to mix and talk freely with the assembled experts.

Next day we joined all of the other Western Isles renewables groups in Stornoway town hall for a presentation to the wider public, again very well attended.The second and most enriching milestone is the news that Horshader Community Development Ltd. has been awarded a £10,000 investing in ideas grant to allow us to develop the community wind energy project and proceed to a project funding application, through The Big Lottery “Growing Community Assets” fund. This application comes in two parts, an outline application to be submitted by 1st of August 2008, if this is successful it will then lead to the submission of a full and detailed application being submitted later in 2008.

Continue reading ‘Two more milestones on the journey’

The weather once again delayed Friday 8th February’s mast installation target, after much agonising over BBC TV forecasts and scrutinising several web forecasting sites the mast was finally hoisted to the vertical on Monday morning 11th February 2008. It was a joy to watch as the engineers from Chillwind Ltd. expertly and effortlessly lifted it into position. It will remain there for the next 12 months gathering vital data for our project.

We will post regular updates as we reach new milestones along the way, please enjoy the photos attached to this post, there are more on the media page for those who just can’t get enough.

It has taken a bit longer than we had hoped, but we now have planning permission to erect a monitoring mast on the proposed site, approximately 120 metres from the main road, opposite the Norse Mill car park.

The mast, about 50 metres high, has been acquired from the North Harris Trust, will be installed by Chill Wind, and will collect meteorological data for a year in order to demonstrate the viability of the project to banks.

At the moment, if the weather cooperates, Chill Wind would like to fit out the mast on Friday 18th January, and erect it on Saturday 19th 2008.  Watch this space!