Mayo wind farm is functioning again after 11 week shutdown

After a shutdown lasting more than 11 weeks, Ireland’s largest onshore wind farm at Bellacorrick in north Mayo is now fully operational again.

When launched in March, the Oweninny Wind Farm project, a 50-50 joint venture between the ESB and Bord Na Mona, was hailed as having the potential to produce enough clean energy to meet the electricity demand of approximately 140,000 homes and businesses.

However, for almost three months blades on the 60 large turbines have been motionless due to what has been described as 'a grid cable outage'.

Mayo Fine Gael Councillor Gerry Coyle has questioned the capacity of the cable network to transmit onwards the vast new power that is being generated.

He said: “It was a bizarre sight to drive by and see all those turbines standing totally idle for months on end.

“I have been on to the ESB but they keep coming up with all kinds of excuses.

"We were told initially (in April) the turbines would be back on within two weeks but almost three months elapsed before the problems were resolved."

The giant turbines stopped on April 8 and didn’t start spinning until Tuesday last, June 25, meaning the wind farm was out of commission for a total of 11 weeks and one day.