Group invests €14m in wind farm

A group involving former IDA boss, Pádraic White and the family behind the Arigna Fuels business, is investing €14 million in a new wind farm.

It emerged yesterday that Moneenatieve Wind Farm Ltd has agreed to buy €8.5 million worth of wind turbines from Spanish company Gamesa. The equipment will be used on two wind farms near Arigna on the Leitrim- Roscommon border.

The main shareholders in Moneenatieve are members of the Layden family, which originally owned the Arigna coal mine and Arigna Fuels businesses. They have been working in the alternative energy business for eight years.

Former IDA chief executive and industrial policy guru, Mr White, chairs the group. He told The Irish Times yesterday that the company had raised €14 million through equity, debt and a business expansion scheme (BES) to invest in developing the two wind farms at Altaglowan, Arigna.

The farms will have a total of 14 turbines. The equipment that Moneenatieve has bought from Gamesa has the capacity to generate 12 mega watts (mw) of electricity. The Spanish company will begin installing it this summer. The project is its first venture in the Republic. Mr White said that work is already under way at the site. "Construction has started and they expect to be in full production in September of this year," he said.

Late last year, the Department of Communications, Marine and Natural Resources, awarded Moneenatieve a contract to supply 7.65mw of electricity to the ESB. Industry sources estimate the value of this deal at just over €1.5 million a year.

The Department awarded the contract to the company under the Alternative Energy Requirement (AER) scheme under which the State has to ensure that a proportion of energy needs are supplied from "green" sources.