A West Yorkshire dairy farm and ice cream producer is installing a wind turbine which it hopes will provide all of the electricity needed to power the farm.
*Delph House Farm* in Denby Dale is a 250-acre dairy farm with 150 cows and the home of Yummy Yorkshire Ice Cream Company. The farm has been processing and bottling its own milk since it was established in the early 1960s and is currently managed by Jeremy Holmes and his father Philip.
Jeremy plans to install a 50-kilowatt Endurance E-3120 wind turbine and is hoping to generate 1005 of the 700 kilowatts of energy his farm uses each year, with the surplus energy generated being directed back into the grid. This equates to a saving of more than £24,000 a year and he hopes to recoup his investment within ten years.
Jeremy says: *”We’re in a windy spot here at Delph House Farm and I’ve been looking into the possibility of using a wind turbine for several years to reduce our carbon footprint and boost our income. Farmers’ incomes and margins have eroded over the past ten years and as a dairy farm, our electricity bill is particularly big. The savings we could make on this, plus the income potential means the turbine is a relatively straightforward way to securing a viable future for us.”*
“The turbine will be installed behind the farm meaning there is no visual impact as the location does not encroach on any other properties, nor is it close to any footpaths. Work on the installation has begun already and should be completed by the end of March.”
The £250,000 turbine has been funded with a loan from the Agricultural Mortgage Corporation (AMC), facilitated by Carter Jonas which specialises in providing farm and rural finance.
Dan Taylor, a senior associate and AMC Agent at Carter Jonas’ York office says: “We are delighted to be associated with such an innovative business and to have secured funding from AMC for such a sustainable and economically viable project.
“The Holmes’ wind turbine could be a catalyst for other agricultural businesses with high energy demands to follow suit, particularly dairy farms in the region.”
The wind turbine is being installed by Holmfirth based company Newgen which specialises in wind turbines and solar PV systems for domestic, commercial and agricultural use. Dean Stavely, managing director, adds:
“We are looking forward to working with Yummy Yorkshire to help ensure that rising energy prices are controlled by the installation of this wind turbine.
“The E-3120 has proven to be a winner in its class of medium scale wind turbines and the installation at Delph House Farm is set to be another success for renewable energy, both to help the Farm reduce its dependency on traditional fossil fuels but also to prove that green energy is the way forward.”
Speaking about the safety of the wind turbines he adds: “The Endurance 50kW is designed to shut down automatically when the wind reaches 25 metres/second (56 miles/hour), when there is a grid failure or when the blades begin to spin too quickly.”