Scotland’s largest privately owned solar farm has generated enough power in its first year to create 3.3 million litres of ice cream.
Mackie’s of Scotland is based on a 1600 acre farm in Aberdeenshire where the wind, sun, land and cows help produce fresh milk and green power for the business – what they call their “sky to scoop” process.
The 1.8MW solar farm consists of 7,000 solar panels and is on track to generate 1.5 million kilowatt hours in 2016, enough electricity to power 485 homes. It’s not only Scotland’s largest privately owned solar power plant, but was the region’s first.
Many companies around the world have discovered the benefits of commercial solar in the last few years, but the Mackie’s haven’t just recently jumped on the renewables bandwagon. Maitland Mackie, founder of the company, started tinkering with renewable renewable energy decades ago.
“My father was a pioneer in wind energy, trialling wind power with an early 50KW model in 1982 and later rejoicing in the output from our four wind turbines which total 3MW and were installed in stages from 2005,” said Managing Director and Maitland’s son, Mac Mackie.
Another smaller solar power system is located at the farm and 400 kW of heating power for the office and houses is sourced from a biomass plant.
Mr. Mackie says his company now exports surplus green electricity to the mains grid, another step towards Mackie’s goal of becoming the greenest company in Britain.
Other sustainability efforts by the company include zero waste water practices and the use of natural fertiliser created with some substantial help from the farm’s cows.
As a region, Scotland has made incredible progress towards a renewable energy future.
According to Scottish Renewables, renewable electricity generation displaced approximately 13,400,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide last year, equivalent to around 28 per cent of Scotland’s carbon emissions in 2014.
The renewables sector is also a huge employer in the region; with 21,000 people in jobs across sectors including onshore and offshore wind, biomass, solar, hydro and renewable heat.
The Scottish Government has set a target of 100% renewable electricity generation (gross consumption) by 2020.
