Farming the wind 53 metres up

Rising from lush Northern Ireland farmland stands Kyle Murray’s office. It’s just Kyle’s office stands 53 metres tall.
Watch more of our videos on Shots! 
and live on Freeview channel 276
Visit Shots! now

Kyle is a ‘Senior Wind Engineer’ or you could call him a wind farmer. Just like farmers, Kyle and his colleagues from Everun, a Northern Ireland based wind turbine operator, are out working in all weathers, day and night to keep their machinery running.

Kyle has been with Everun for over 10 years. Everun was established in 2010, is headquartered in Belfast and now manages over 100 onshore wind projects. They specialise in small (2-3) or single turbine developments. Exactly the sort of infrastructure that suits farmers. Everun offer a complete service with workers like Kyle managing the turbine and site day to day. It’s an exciting job: in certain windspeeds the turbine will sway while they are up there.

The turbine Kyle is climbing is actually recycled. It came from a large windfarm in Germany where it had come to the end of its most efficient working life. But a bit like a second-hand car, Everun bought it, refurbished it, and gave it a new lease of life on a farm in Northern Ireland.

A bird's eye viewA bird's eye view
A bird's eye view

According to Everun, The Turbine Model is called a Vestas V5 and it is capable of producing 850Kwh. It’s 53 metres tall. Which is 3 metres shy of the height of the Space Shuttle. Or the height of Godzilla in the 1954 original (Godzilla has got bigger in subsequent films). Or 2 metres higher than Nelson’s column. At the end of the life of the Everun turbine, it is broken down ever further. The blades for example are recycled and end up in bridges.

With the UK being one of the windiest countries in Europe, and with changes to farming revenue ahead, a turbine could be a useful diversified income. Farmers have been harnessing the wind’s energy for centuries. However, generating electricity has only been developed more recently, with the first commercial wind farm built in 1991 in Cornwall.

For farmers in Northern Ireland a wind turbine, if they can get planning permission, can be lucrative. Everun say that all turbines vary in what they can produce from site to site. The deals struck by individual landowners also vary. Some get 2% a year; some get 10%. But they say that one turbine takes up roughly (they can’t be specific) a quarter of an acre, and the revenue generated is equivalent to renting out 100 fields. That’s for doing nothing. They don’t have to touch it. That’s Kyle’s job.

“I started off as an electrician by trade and one day I just connected a cable at the bottom for a guy and then he told me I may as well stay on. That was 10 years ago. No two days are the same. It’s good fun. It’s such a niche market that not a lot of people do it,” said Kyle.

Kyle Murray at his 'office'Kyle Murray at his 'office'
Kyle Murray at his 'office'

90% of Kyle’s maintenance work happens at the top of the turbines - where the machinery is housed. “We look after 150 of these. We’re climbing up a 53 metre tower. We’re doing anything from maintaining, servicing, fixing breakdowns and all sorts of repairing.”

To see Kyle at work, this reporter braved 157 rungs on the ladder to the top of a turbine. A 53 metre climb is enough to raise the heart rate, but when we clipped our harnesses on and emerged at the top of the turbine, a glimpse down at the sheer drop will send it skyrocketing. The view makes up for it: 360 degrees of green fields, and blue seas beyond. As Kyle says, “It’s not a bad office. It would be an excellent spot for sunbathing”. The day we climbed was calm and still, but on an average day the turbine generates 250kw of electricity, powering 25 houses.

Kyle is enthusiastic about windfarms as a diversified revenue stream for farmers. “There’s no such thing as just a farmer now. This is quite a new industry so not a lot of people know about it. There are periods of growth - several shot up around 5 years ago. Farmers can’t lose. As a rough ballpark, they might earn in the region of £7,000 to £15,000 per year. You could say these farmers have diversified into farming the air.

It looks like Kyle’s skills will be ever more in demand as onshore wind is being pushed in Northern Ireland by multiple parties. In 2020 Northern Ireland generated almost 50% of our power from renewables, and the plan is to increase that to 80% by the end of the decade.

Kyle MurrayKyle Murray
Kyle Murray

To meet the UK government’s targets of net zero by 2050, the sector claims that onshore wind will need to play a central part in planning. Wind generation will need to increase from 1.4GW today to 2.5GW, which would mean over 300 onshore wind turbines being built in NI. The industry says that would boost the Northern Ireland economy by £3bn and bring in 1,000 jobs.

In 2020, the UK generated 75,610 gigawatt hours (GWh) of electricity from both offshore and onshore wind. This would be enough to power 8.4 trillion LED light bulbs. Individually, both offshore and onshore wind electricity generation has grown substantially since 2009. Wind energy generation accounted for 24% of total electricity generation (including renewables and non-renewables) in 2020; with offshore wind accounting for 13% and onshore wind accounting for 11%.

As of March 2022, there were 11,091 wind turbines in the UK, giving Britain the sixth-largest wind power capacity of any country in the world.