In light of the COVID-19 restrictions, which have made traditional school tours impossible in 2021, Energia instead invited Aoife McCabe from Scoil Aodh Rua Agus Nuala to report from the Meenadreen wind farm in south Donegal.

The Meenadreen windfarm, in south Donegal, is one of the largest wind farms on the island of Ireland.  It has a capacity of 95MW (Megawatts) with 38 turbines and is capable of producing enough electricity to sustainably power 50,000 homes, reducing Ireland’s carbon outputs by 100,000 tonnes of CO2 every year.  Energia invested over €145m in developing the farm which began providing electricity to the national grid in 2016.

Aoife held a Q & A with Meenadreen Field Operations Manager Brendan McGlinchey and Site Supervisor Jason Doherty.

Working in partnership with Midlands Science, a not-for-profit company whose mission is to promote interest in STEM [Science, Technology, Engineering & Maths] education in the Midlands, Energia asked schools to submit questions about wind energy. 

Energia received a broad variety of interesting and well thought out questions, including how wind is turned in to electricity? Do wind turbines play a part in combatting in climate change? How big are turbines compared to humans? And how fast do windmills have to go to create electricity?

While the video was produced for schools who might have usually have toured the windfarms, it can be viewed by all now and we think the wind farm facts will be interesting for all.

The full video report can be viewed below.

Aoife is only six but is already a skilled investigative reporter and says she learned a lot at Meenadreen.  

‘I was very happy to spend the day at Meenadreen, learning about wind farms and energy. I see the turbines from my home all the time but I had never been that close before. I liked being up really high and getting to see inside the turbines. It was great fun interviewing Brendan and Jason for the video.’

Answering the questions were  Energia Field Operations Manager, Brendan McGlinchey and Site Supervisor Jason Doherty, who were certainly impressed with Aoife’s reporting skills. Brendan commented:

“Global Wind Day is normally a great opportunity for Energia to invite local school children to visit one of our 15 wind farms and learn more about renewable energy.  The continuing Covid-19 restrictions meant we had to host a video tour instead this year but we wanted to make it as interactive as possible, asking school children to send in their questions."

“Aoife did a great job reporting from the wind farm.  It’s great to see so many young people taking an interest in wind energy and what we do here on the wind farm.”

Energia's marketing colleagues together with Renewables were delighted to produce this content to celebrate Global Wind Day and we hope you feel as inpsired as us about the future of green energy and how interesting it actually is!

#GlobalWindDay #PositiveEnergy #GreenerFuture #Energia #MakingEnergyCool