Preliminary proposals have been developed for a windfarm of approximately 8 to 12 wind turbines on land above the Maerdy coal tip, to the northwest of Maerdy and the north of Treorchy.

The site can accommodate eight "3MW" ( three megawatt) turbines as shown in the indicative plan below.

Alternatively the site could accommodate approximately twelve smaller "2MW" turbines within the same area, or a configuration in between.

Indicative 12 "2MW" turbine layout:

Your opinion on whether 8 larger or 12 smaller turbines is preferable is invited as part of the public consultation on the windfarm. This will help direct the design of the windfarm. The Visualisations Section contains indicative views of the different project layouts to help form opinions and the Your Opinion Section explains how to submit your views to the public consultation. Following environmental studies and the public consultation, the final project design could be smaller than the layouts described here.

The Wind Turbines

The turbines have a tower, a housing or “nacelle” at the top holding all the generators and equipment, and three blades. The image below depicts how the windfarm could look from the north of the site . The turbines would be painted an off white colour, which by experience planners have found to be the best colour to blend with different skies. The turbines are built on a concrete foundation approximately 2m deep.

The larger 3MW turbines have a tower approximately 80 metres high and blades 45 metres long. The smaller 2MW turbines have minimum towers 67 metres high and blades 40 metres long.

Today’s turbines are larger than those erected in previous years. This enables far fewer tubines to be used to achieve the same amount of wind generated electricity. There are fewer turbines to see and the amount of track needed is less. The turbines also rotate at a slower speed than earlier, smaller ones(approximately 4 seconds to make one revolution).

Often turbines are compared in size to well known landmarks such as Big Ben, Blackpool Tower, etc.. The important consideration, however, is what the project will actually look like. We hope that in preparing the visualisations people can form their own opinion on the proposals.