Port Elizabeth’s windswept landscape already features one wind farm, and the building of a second farm on the other side of the city is currently under debate. Hearings are underway today in PE, to test opinion on the development of a new wind farm at Blue Horizon Bay. Many residents are opposed to this – basically, because wind farms are ugly.

Aesthetic concerns aside, if the project earmarked for Blue Horizon Bay goes ahead, the nine turbine farm would generate 80 000 megawatts of power a year for 20 years. That’s enough clean electricity to meet much of the windy city’s yearly power requirement – about R92 million worth of energy annually.

In conjunction with the existing Port Elizabeth wind farm, the Blue Horizon Bay development west of the city could feed the national grid significantly as well.

If only someone could come up with a way to make those big turbines not so… well, big and unsightly on the horizon, hmm?

[Source: Times Live]