Wind farm study for Spur Tree

The National Irrigation Commission (NIC) Limited is to embark on an economic feasibility study over the next 18 months to determine how it will go about implementing a wind farm to generate five megawatts of energy in the Newark, Spur Tree area, in Manchester.

This will form the second phase of a Wind Power Irrigation Projects, being done in collaboration with the Ministry of Science, Technology, Energy and Mining, to evaluate the feasibility of utilising wind technology to reduce the electricity cost of providing irrigated water to farmers.

The first phase of the project had the primary objective of collecting and assessing data on the quality of the wind conditions at the site to inform the future course of action.

Director of engineering and technical services at the NIC, Milton Henry, said one of the specific activities in the recently concluded phase was "conducting a wind resource analysis over a period of 12 months in order to determine if the wind potential was sufficient to establish a wind farm for generating electricity".

He said that from this, the team was able to determine the number, size and type of wind turbines that would be needed to generate the desired power.

Henry was speaking at a ceremony at the NIC's office on Old Hope Road in Kingston, to hand over equipment and a final report from that phase of the project to the University of the West Indies, Mona, on Monday.