Ireland’s largest windfarm, Energia’s 95MW windfarm at Meenadreen in south Donegal, has officially started supplying power to homes and businesses across Ireland, setting a new Irish record.

The windfarm contains 38 turbines and is capable of producing enough electricity to power 50,000 homes. It is the culmination of years of development work and construction, which started in 2014, took 26 months to complete. Energia Renewables has invested €145m to develop the windfarm, bringing its total investment in wind farms developments to over €500m. Crucially, Meenadreen will reduce the island’s carbon dioxide emissions by 100,000 tonnes each year. 

Meenadreen has 38 Nordex N90 2.5MW turbines and was financed by loans from NordLB supported by Euler Hermes. Construction works were carried out by Denis Moriarty “the Kerries” Limited and electrical works by Kirby Group limited. Engineering services were provided by Wind Prospect and Jennings O’Donovan, with legal support from Arthur Cox. 

Energia Renewables is among Ireland’s leading providers of sustainable green energy and 25% of Ireland’s wind power is provided through Energia to homes and businesses. Energia currently supplies almost 1,000 MWs (1GW) of renewable energy, with more on the way. 

Peter Baillie, Managing Director of Energia Renewables, commented, “Since 2008 Energia has invested over €350m in developing and constructing new windfarms. We are very proud to have delivered this large-scale project and to finally see it start supplying energy to homes and businesses around the island of Ireland.” 

“We’d like to thank the local community at Leghowney for their support and are delighted that this Meenadreen windfarm will be providing further community funding for the local areas and local authority rates for the lifetime of the windfarms”

Image: Thomas McNulty