East Kilbride, Glasgow

In the late 90s, while the wind industry was pre occupied with where the next round of subsidies were coming from, we came up with the concept of ‘Merchant Wind Power’.

Basically it’s about building windmills on industrial sites. Providing green electricity at the point of use – and so avoiding the costs of using the grid for delivery. This, we reasoned, would enable us to build wind turbines without subsidies and sell the power without a premium.

It took us a couple of years to get the idea off the ground, and in 2001 we built our first Merchant Wind Power project at Sainsbury’s cold store and distribution depot near Glasgow.

In the process we built the UK’s first fully commercial wind turbine, perhaps the world’s first.

Our one smallish windmill here provides enough green electricity each year to power about a third of the depot.