Isle of Eigg gets 24 hr power from renewable sources.
After ten years in the development, Eigg now has 95% of its energy supply from renewable sources, combining hydroelectricity, a wind farm and an interconnected array of photovoltaic solar cells.
On 1/2/08, they switched over:
Congratulations to them!
45 households, 20 businesses and six community buildings are linked together by six miles of buried cable that forms a high voltage network.
Eigg is 9 kilometres long from north to south, and five kilometres east to west. With an area of twelve square miles, it is the second largest of the Small Isles after Rùm.
There are around 40 houses on the island and everyone had to generate their own electricity – most using diesel generators. Many of the generators are about 25 years old and environmentally they aren’t great. The cost of diesel is rocketing and there are transport costs too. There is a lot of difficulty getting fuel here. It comes in on a big boat, in 45 gallon barrels which have to be transported to each house.
The Isle of Eigg Heritage Trust raised £45,000 for the project and the islanders brought in a further £30,000. Funding also came from Europe, the Big Lottery Fund, Highlands and Islands Enterprise, Highlands and Islands Community Energy Company, the Scottish Government and Highland Council.
Any decisions to be made about the island go to the board of the Isle of Eigg Trust, which was set up after residents bought the island in 1997. The grid system is the one thing that everyone in the Trust has been in favour of. There are usually some people who don’t vote for proposals, but this time everyone agreed. It has united people.
This is a great example of an environmentally beneficial project that helps people, and gets completed.
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on Friday, February 1st, 2008 at 12:50 pm and is filed under Eco-News.
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