About the project
Oxford City Council has been working with Partnerships for Renewables to investigate the potential for the development of small commercial-scale wind energy projects on its land.
Following the screening of the Council's land assets and preliminary surveys of the most promising sites, the Cutteslowe landholding was identified as a promising site meriting further investigation.
An advert was recently placed in the Oxford Times by the council informing the public of the intention to dispose, by way of lease, an area of land at Cutteslowe Park. If this ‘disposal’ takes place it will trigger the start of the detailed investigation work required to establish whether the site is an appropriate location for a wind turbine. These studies would take at least 12 months and include the submission of a planning application for a wind monitoring mast at the early stages of assessment work. If the work resulted in a future wind turbine planning application it would be subject to the full planning process.
The Potential Turbine
The work carried out so far suggests that the Cutteslowe Park site could potentially accommodate a single wind turbine with a generation capacity of between two and three megawatts (MW) and a tip height of up to 130 metres. The specification of the turbine will be chosen to generate the maximum amount of renewable energy while satisfying the environmental and technical constraints on the site so the tip height could reduce as we gather further detailed technical and environmental information.