Olympic wind turbine scrapped in favour of alternatives

4 June 2010

The UK’s Olympic Delivery Authority (ODA) has decided not to deliver a wind turbine on the Olympic Park following research and industry engagement.

The move comes after the Spanish European Presidency announced a new European Wind Initiative this week that aims for wind energy to supply half of Europe’s energy requirements by 2050.

The ODA said it will identify alternative options for renewable energy infrastructure across the Olympic Park.

A wind turbine had been proposed for Eton Manor in the north of the site as part of the ODA’s target to deliver 20 per cent of the Olympic Park’s legacy energy requirements from renewable sources from 2014 onwards when the site is fully operational.

Factors included in the decision were wider safety legislation applying to design elements of the proposed wind turbine that the preferred bidder’s turbine supplier for the project felt unable to comply and withdrew from the project, said ODA.

It said that the new requirements and challenging delivery timetable resulted in limited commercial interest in the project.

David Higgins, CEO of ODA, said, ‘We have carried out an exhaustive process with the industry and suppliers over the last two years to find a viable way of delivering a wind turbine on the Olympic Park site. However, the industry environment has changed and that means the project is no longer feasible.’

‘Our focus is now on researching a number of alternative renewable energy options across the Olympic Park site to help contribute to these targets and compliment the other state-of-the art new energy infrastructure we are building,’ he added.

A new energy centre currently being built on the Olympic Park site is working to identify additional options for renewable energy infrastructure including photovoltaic (PV) panels, biomass gasification, which the ODA said will be decided on later this year.

A business plan for the possible procurement and installation of a biomass gasification plant is now being taken forward and possible site locations for PV panels are being identified, said ODA.

Copyright © 2010 NewNet

Tags: wind, wind turbine

This story was published on Friday, June 4th, 2010 at 12:23 pm and is filed under Europe, companies, wind. You can follow any responses to article entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.

One Response to “Olympic wind turbine scrapped in favour of alternatives”

1. David Oxnam says:

   8 June 2010 at 10:20 am

   Surely a turbine in the Thames could generate enough power to make the whole Olympic Park ‘green’ for energy. As it would be tidal it would be reliable as well

Leave a Reply