The history of Wind & Site studies is very diverse. Every case, every story reveals something about the history of wind energy which is specific to a region, a time, but also very universal and tells us about what’s common to all practitioners. The present article tells the story of a group from Northern England who started off as a cooperative named the Northumbrian Energy Workshop in the late 70s and became a developer, Border Wind, at the turn of the 90s, with two major projects in its portfolio: the Blyth harbour and Blyth Offshore wind farms – kick starters of the British Offshore Wind adventure.
For preparing this article, I’ve had the pleasure to learn about Northumbrian Energy Workshop (NEW) and Border Wind from Anabel Gammidge, who joined NEW in the early 80s and took part to the entire Border Wind adventure, continuing her career with Border Wind successors* until today. Anabel has played a key role in NEW and Border Wind Wind & Site activities, and has been leading the Wind Resource Assessment Group, a knowledge-sharing forum for UK professionals.
Other sources include:
- Magazine (SCRAM) and newspaper articles.
- Border Wind and AMEC archived websites.
- Scientific and technical literature, including Benjamin Fischer’s PhD thesis “Creating new pathways in peripheral regional economies: the offshore wind and printable electronics industries in the North East of England” (2015)
- Wildcat film videos “Offshore Wind” and “Everything You Wanted to Know About Science” – Wind Energy & Data Science (featuring Anabel!)
*Border Wind was acquired by AMEC in 2001, and then on became part of Vattenfall, and RWE.
Rethinking Energy in the 1970s
In the mid 70s, in a post-colonial and cold-war context, after the oil crises and with the emergence of the late 60s counterculture and environmentalism, energy production and consumption came to the center of discussions and initiatives from multiple organisations in the UK and globally. Famous works published in this period include:
- Schumacher, Small Is Beautiful (1973)
- Illich, Tools for Conviviality (1973) and Energy and Equity (1974)
- Lovins, Soft Energy Paths (1977)
- Dickson, Alternative Technology and the Politics of Technical Change (1974)
Examples of such UK organisations are listed in the collective book “Noves tecnologies : risc i alternatives (1986)” (featuring, among the authors, Pep Puig from Ecotècnia)
Some of these engaged with Wind Energy projects, mostly small wind turbines for domestic use. See the below overview which includes Northumbrian Energy Workshop, the only cooperative (most of the others being NGOs). Today, the most famous is CAT possibly, who provide university-level courses.
| Organisation | Location | Period | Status / contribution |
| Intermediate Technology Development Group (ITDG) – renamed Practical Action in 2005 | London; later Rugby, Warwickshire | 1966 – present | Charity/NGO |
| Centre for Alternative Technology (CAT) | Machynlleth, Powys, Wales | 1973 – present | Charity/NGO |
| Northumbrian Energy Workshop (NEW) | Hexham, Northumberland | 1978 – 1989 | Cooperative |
| NATTA – Network for Alternative Technology and Technology Assessment | Milton Keynes, at the Open University | 1979 – present | Information service |
| Findhorn Foundation | Findhorn, Moray, Scotland | 1972 – present | Charity/NGO |
| Low Energy Supply Systems (LESS) | UK; town not yet identified | 1985 – ca. 1992 | Private business |
The other groups were less involved in Wind Energy project, but supported boader public debates on Energy, see the below overview.
| Organisation | Location | Period | Status / contribution |
| Earth Resources Research Ltd | London; later Child Okeford, Dorset | 1973 – 2020 | Non-profit |
| Political Ecology Research Group (PERG) | Oxford | 1976 – 1992 | Advocacy group |
| Centre for Alternative Industrial and Technological Systems (CAITS) | North-East London Polytechnic, London | 1978 – 1990 | Research center |
| Urban Centre for Appropriate Technology (UCAT), renamed Centre For Sustainable Energy (CSE) in 1994 | Bristol | 1979 – present | Charity / NGO |
| London Energy and Employment Network (LEEN) | London | 1983 – 1992 | Public-sector supported network |
| Sheffield Centre for Product Development and Technological Resources (SCEPTRE) | Sheffield | 1983 – late 1980 | Public-sector supported network |
| Schumacher Centre for Technology Choice | London area | ca. 1980 | Charity (linked to ITDG above) |
Northumbrian Energy Workshop Ltd, a Workers Cooperative
In this context, the Northumbrian Energy Workshop Ltd (NEW) was founded in December 1978 as an offshoot of the 1974 New Age Access collective. Early members included Bill Grainger, Penny Dale, and Geoff Watson. According to (Revell, 1983) New Age Access experimented with small wind turbines, and “practise[d] alternative forms of working, technology and education” (Turning Point, 1979). As Watson explains (Smith, 2010), New Age Access
[…] wanted to act as an access point whereby people who wanted to generate their own power, grow their own food, live off the land, whatever, had somewhere they could turn to and get information about doing it for groups, for contact.
NEW operated as a workers’ cooperative (equal pay), in 1983 it counted 7 full-time employees and delivered small wind turbine systems for domestic use and remote areas. Several articles in the SCRAM* Energy Bulletin explain NEW’s activitites: designing small wind turbine for remote areas and domestic use, see below.
*Scottish Campaign to Resist the Atomic Menace, an anti-nuclear campaign group founded in Edinburgh, Scotland, in autumn 1977.
The team worked in Scotland, but also a wide range of projects across the world, from Mongolia to Seychelles, the Artic and the Falklands Islands (Penguin News, 1987). As stated on Border Wind’s website (see next section) in the late 90s:
Working together since the early 1980’s, the team has developed expertise in all forms of renewable energy technologies. Projects included sending standalone mini wind turbines to power the yurts of Outer Mongolia and high reliability wind/solar/diesel power supplies for the telecommunications market.An innovative project was designed for the island of Foula, 15 km west of the Shetland Isles. Before the project was installed the isalnd’s 50 households relied on individual diesel generators. The project installed a 50 kW wind turbine, a hydro-electric turbine with pumps capable of pumping the water back up the hillside to the specially formed dam. With a brand new centralised diesel generator, an intelligent plc controller was designed and built by Border Wind’s current engineers. The system has proved to be very successful and the diesel usage has been minimal. Excess electricity is now used in the island’s house to heat storage radiators.
The island of Foula project they mention is the community electricity scheme constructed in 1987. This comprised of a 3.3kV grid linking diesel generators, a wind turbine and a hydroelectric scheme to the islands’ properties.
Phil Smith recalls:
From my experiences I would say that the Falkland Islands have one of the best wind regimes in the world because you have here an availability factor of 60–80% which means a 10 kw generator will be able to produce an average of 6–8 kw day in, day out. The best you can ever hope for in the U.K is a 40% availability. The Islands have constant strong winds but gales, though they happen, rarely succeed 90 miles an hour. Other areas we have worked in have had a variable wind and then will then produce a gale of 200 mile an hour winds which will wreck anything.
NEW designed their own low-consumption logger for recording wind statistics and building frequency tables, see this 1981 add from (Practical Computing, 1981):
Source: (Practical Computing, 1981)
Detailed technical specifications can be found below, from a 1986 technical report (Schotte, 1986) comparing several loggers commercially available at the time.
The loggers are sorted in four categories, corresponding to their data storage capabilities, see below. NEW’s datalogger was then rivaling the Secondwind’s Al-2000!
NEW published several journal articles in conferences and scientific journals, among others:
- “A Co-operative Approach to the Design, Supply and Installation of Natural Energy Systems” (Smith and Watson, 1984), part of the “Energy for Rural and Island Communities” 1983 conference.
- “Wind and solar data for sizing small wind turbine and photovoltaic power plants” (Grangier, 1990)
Their adventure stopped in 1989, and the cooperative stopped existing due to adverse market conditions on this segment.
Border Wind – Wind Farms co-Developers
Two new companies followed the closure, both created by former NEW members:
- Econnect, a company delivering specialist electrical-engineering consultancy (grid-connection, power-system modelling, control and integration solutions, etc), later acquired by Seanergy in 2008.
- Border Wind, a wind farm developer created by NEW ex-CEO (David Still) and three ex-employees.
Border Wind was then founded in 1992, in a post-Thatcher, liberalised electricity market. The company was a wind farm developers with Technical Excellence in Project Conception, Engineering, Management and Operation & Maintenance:
Border Wind develops and operates wind farms in the UK and abroad. Our policy is normally to be approached by landowners to co-develop sites. We do not normally search for sites. Currently we operate three wind frams and are currently developing sites in the UK. Nine of them have contracts awarded under the NFFO scheme and planning applications are currently being prepared for submission in 1999
After their acquisition by AMEC in 2001 their project portfolio counted 6 operating wind farms, and 9 projects in development, including the Lynn offshore project.
| Project name | Location | Turbine type and number | Total capacity | Start of operation |
| Blyth Harbour | East Pier, Blyth Harbour, Northumberland, England | 9 × WindMaster, 300 kW | 2.7 MW | 1993-01 |
| Caton Moor | Near Lancaster, Lancashire, England | 10 × WindMaster, 300 kW; model unspecified | 3 MW | 1994-12 |
| Great Eppleton | Near Hetton-le-Hole, Sunderland, England | 4 × WindMaster, 750 kW; two-bladed | 3 MW | 1999-03 |
| Kirkheaton | Near Hexham, Northumberland, England | 3 × Nordex N43, 600 kW | 1.8 MW | 2000-03 |
| Blyth Offshore | Approximately 1 km offshore from Blyth Harbour | 2 × Vestas V66, 2 MW | 4 MW | 2000-12 |
| Tow Law & High Hedley | Near Tow Law, County Durham, England | 6 × Nordex N50, 770 kW; three per wind farm | 4.62 MW combined | 2001-12 |
| Project name | Location | Turbine type and number | Total capacity |
| Lewis | Isle of Lewis, Western Isles, Scotland | Model and number unspecified; joint development with British Energy Renewables | 600–900 MW |
| Lynn Offshore | Approximately 5 km off Skegness, Lincolnshire, England | 30 three-bladed turbines; model not selected; implied rating 2–3.6 MW each | 60–108 MW; typically 90 MW |
| Edinbane | Near Edinbane, Isle of Skye, Scotland | 27 × 1.75 MW; model not selected | 47.25 MW |
| Tees Wind North | Corus steelworks site, near Redcar, Teesside, England | 18 × 2.5 MW; model not selected | 45 MW |
| Clachan Flats | Ardkinglas and Argyll Estates, near Cairndow, Argyll, Scotland | 11 × 1.75 MW; model not selected | 19.25 MW |
| Holmside Hall | Near Stanley, County Durham, England | 2 × 2 MW; model being selected | 4 MW |
| Hare Hill | Near Peterlee, County Durham, England | 4 MW | |
| High Volts | Near Elwick, Hartlepool, England | 3 × 2 MW; model being selected | 6 MW |
| Werfa | Near Bridgend, Wales | 19 × 750 kW–1.3 MW; model not selected | 14.25–24.7 MW |
Border Wind had a strong local presence in Northumberland, and produced teaching materials for school children:
Border Wind worked closely with a number of teachers in Northumberland on providing information for use in schools. The priority for this was that the material be easy to use, by teachers and pupils alike and lastly but significantly that the material be readily reproducible and relevant to the National Curriculum.
Border Wind & Blyth – Kickstarting the British Offshore Adventure
Border Wind’s most influencial projects were the Blyth Harbour (1993) and the Blyth Offshore (2000) wind farms. As stated on AMEC’s website in the early 2000s:
Blyth Harbour was the first wind farm to be built in an industrial area in the UK and was the UK’s first semi-offshore wind farm. Nine 300 kW wind turbines are built out along the East Pier at Blyth. In the 1960’s, the Port of Blyth was the largest coal exporting port in Europe. Now it is a significant importer of paper products from Finland with no coal exports.
Border Wind initiated the project, obtained debt and equity finance, all consents and acted as Project Manager and Engineer to the Project. The wind farm is owned by the Blyth Harbour Commission. The wind farm was constructed during 1992 and commissioned in January 1993. Built with the support of the EC Thermie programme the wind farm is owned by the Port of Blyth and Border Wind.
Seven of the turbines had to be erected using a floating crane. This subjected this early project to immense technical problems, all overcome by the various contractors who built the project. Using a floating crane in the port was not easy with severe limitations placed on its operational availability because of the height of the tide, water depths at turbine locations,swell generated in the river and of course the wind.
There is a nice video available on YouTube, and featuring Anabel, see it there (unfortunately I could not embed it in the post).
Following the Blyth Harbour project, a couple of turbines were later deployed offshore, this became the Blyth Offshore project. This demo project was orginally planned as a direct successor of the Blyth Harbour, but it was eventually realised a little later.
Metocean and load measurement were used as part a groundbreaking research project involving Garrad Hassan: OWTES – “Design Methods for Offshore Wind Turbines at Exposed Sites”. This is one of several R&D and general outreach initiatives Border Wind took part in:
- OWTES “Design Methods for Offshore Wind Turbines at Exposed Sites”: led by Garrad Hassan and involving Border Wind Limited, Delft Uni, GL, NEG MICON (then became Vestas), Powergen Renewables, and Vestas. The Final Report can be found here. The project played a key role in supporting the development of load calculations, design method and the nascent offshore wind industry standards.
- The Offshore Wind Energy Network (OWEN): Border Wind participated to this research network, for instance with knowledge on wind data during the November 1999 workshop “Offshore Wind Resource Assessment and Metocean Data“.
- With Greenpeace: “Building a New Industry for Britain” (1998)
As David Still explains to the Hexham Courant in 2025:
We wanted to lead, that original group of us, and we got good support from the Crown Estate, from the Port of Blyth, from the Department of Trade and Industry, and of course the consortium, with everyone working to overcome the many obstacles, many of them unexpected. When it finally got over the line and was launched, it felt like Christmas.
In the same article, the Huub den Rooijen and Sally Lockwood recall a “‘can-do’ spirit that brought Blyth to completion” and “being told offshore wind was ‘career-suicide’ and you would hear words like ‘hippies’ or ‘windy miller’ mentioned at the time“.
Blyth was a true pathfinder, with an extensive technology programme much of which was reported publicly.
So, as were the first Danish (and Dutch, and German…) projects, the first British proejcts eventually bore fruits!
Between citizen energy and green modernity
NEW and Border Wind have had a strong influence on the successful development of Wind Energy in Britain. A small, dedicated team of engineers and project developers, orginally engaged in alternative energy collective movements, which then evolved in a strong industrial player. I hope this article will help make their story more visible!
In my recent article “Wind and Site Engineers, “behind the turbines” 1973-1999″ I discuss how different sociotechnical imaginaries intertwined and played each a distinct role in the emergence of the wind industry. NEW and Border Wind happend to lie at the intersection of the “citizen energy” and “green modernity” agendas, i.e. a good balance of well-grounded engineering practice with a strong connection to local stakeholders, and a flair for co-development.
I’d like to thank Anabel for her time, and for all the good she’s be doing – pioneering Wind & Site studies and continously leading community efforts!
Like always, I welcome comments and suggestions, let me know.
Rémi
