1 Build a team

Step one – and probably the hardest of the five steps – is creating a project team. If you’ve never set up a community group before, this can seem a bit daunting. But don’t worry, we’re here to support you along the way.

So how do I create a project team?

Basically, you need to gather five people together for an introductory meeting of ‘[Your area] Community Wind’.

New local people are ideal but if you happen to know friends or family who are keen to help, that can save time. Some tried-and-tested ways of finding your first five people include:

Create a simple Facebook group and use social media like Twitter to put out a call for supporters.
Create a simple poster, eg. “I’d like to start a community energy group and are looking for supporters…”, and post it on noticeboards in your community.

Then meet in a public place like a coffee shop or church hall and have a friendly chat about the idea of creating a community wind project in your area. Agree some simple responsibilities and actions for the group – who is going to do what, some informal rules about who will make decisions, etc – but keep it light and friendly.

Then once that first meeting is over, take some time out…

Congratulations! You’ve taken the first – and often most daunting – step on your community wind journey!

If you’re struggling with this step, drop us an email and we’ll be happy to help: support@votewind.org

Note: you might only need ONE other person to get started as this video shows!

2 Get support for shortlist

After creating your core team, you need to decide on a shortlist of potential wind sites. You can use VoteWind.org to help do this – click on the Possible planning constraint issues after adding a turbine to find detailed planning constraints for your area.

Key factors to consider:

Find sites with higher wind speeds that have minimal planning constraints.
Find sites that are less visible across a wider area.
Find sites nearer to electricity substations.

Sites on higher ground will often have higher wind speeds but will also be more visible, so it’s about striking a balance between different competing requirements.

Once you have your ‘Top 10 Potential Wind Sites’, you then need to gauge local support for each of these sites – it’s pointless pursuing one site if lots of people are going to oppose it. You can use VoteWind.org to get people in your area to vote for your shortlisted sites.

Alternatively, select potential wind sites AND gauge public support at the same time by holding an open meeting where everyone’s encouraged to select specific wind sites:

Talk to the Centre for Sustainable Energy about arranging a ‘Future Energy Landscapes‘ workshop. Unlock the power of community engagement with their seasoned team of planning policy, renewable energy and community engagement experts.
Use VoteWind.org as an interactive tool in public workshops or print out wind site constraint maps to help guide people’s choices.

The important things are:

Be as inclusive as possible. Remember, a community wind turbine is a community wind turbine!
Communicate clearly the benefits of a community wind turbine to people – see our Resources page for more information about potential benefits.

On a more practical level, this is also a good time to decide on the formal structure of your community group:

Will it be a ‘Community Interest Company’ or conventional limited company?
How will decision making be carried out?
Who will be members of the organisation with decision-making powers?
How exactly will the financial benefit to the community be distributed?

However, a cautionary note on the practical stuff: It’s easy to get lost in the nitty gritty of setting up a community group and lose site of proactively involving the whole community. A flashy website’s no good if the community isn’t driving a project forwards!

3 From shortlist to one site

As you refine your shortlist, keep reaching out to as many local people as possible to encourage feedback and promote inclusivity around the project. One guarantee of failure is a strong anti-wind pressure group and that could easily happen if the whole community are not actively included from the start.

Remember: a community wind project only succeeds if it’s driven by the whole community. Each local supporter is a potential investor and improves the chances of receiving planning permission from your local council.

So if you feel support fading… STOP! take a deep breath, go for a walk and come back to it when you feel refreshed. Remember your team is there to support each other. Take the time to listen to people’s concerns and try and address them in a respectful, productive and positive way.

As you build support for your community wind turbine in your local area, start to investigate the practicalities of some of your shortlisted sites:

Find out who the landowners are for your shortlisted sites and approach them for an informal chat.

If some landowners are fiercely against the idea of a wind turbine on their land, that’s absolutely fine – listen to their reasons why and take time to reflect on them. If you properly take their feedback on board, maybe they’ll come round to the idea in the future. Remember, people change their minds – give people time and space to think things over.

However, if you’re building strong local support for your vision of a community wind turbine, local landowners could well be a part of that. Potentially, local landowners could be coming forward to offer their land as potential sites.

Once you have supportive landowners, you then need to determine the wind potential of specific sites through a ‘Wind Resource Assessment’. While the VoteWind website provides basic data on wind speeds, it’s absolutely vital to obtain more detailed on-site measurements of wind potential as this is crucial to demonstrating a strong business case. This could be through installing a test wind mast or using ground based ‘LIDAR’ (eg. https://www.zxlidars.com/cairn-duhie-wind-farm-wins-with-pure-lidar-approach/)

It may be appropriate to bring in an experienced wind consultant at this point. They will have built successful wind projects in the past and can help guide you through the steps needed to deliver your project.

Some useful links to guide you:

4 Create solid proposal

To secure the investment needed to build a community wind turbine requires a cast-iron business case – especially if you’re expecting local people to invest their own money in the project through a community share issue.

So unless you have the necessary expertise within your team / wider community, hire experienced consultants to help build your business case:

Once your organisation has been formally constituted, apply for funding to pay an experienced consultant to conduct a wind feasibility study.
Consult RenewableUK’s list of members
Reach out to your respective national community energy membership group (Community Energy England, Scotland or Wales) and speak to other community energy groups who have already delivered a project. Who do they recommend?

There are a number of funds available to help communities develop community energy projects – consult your national community energy membership group for more information.

Once you have the following in place, you should be in a good position to formally apply to your local council for planning permission for your community wind project:

Clear evidence you will be able to secure the necessary investment for the project.
A professional wind site feasibility study that clearly proves (i) your chosen site has a specific wind potential (ii) has minimal environmental and visual impact and so is not likely to be rejected at planning permission stage.
A solid business case that indicates the investment required and the likely financial returns for the community.
The estimated connection date for your community wind turbine from your local electricity DNO.

5 Go live!

Once you have received planning approval from your local council, have a signed connection agreement with your electricity DNO and have achieved a Final Investment Decision, construction of the wind turbine can finally proceed.

But we’re not quite there yet!

You need to get the turbine foundation built, the tower, blades and nacelle delivered and installed, and the connection to the electricity grid installed and tested…

However, by now you should have an experienced team of consultants who’ve done this all before. So ideally sit back and let them get on with it (while you take lots of pictures of the construction site!).

And, slowly but surely, your community wind turbine will rise up.

Amazing – you, your team and your community have just changed the world.

You refused to give in to negativity and placed a defiant ‘Yes we can’ on the horizon. Awesome.