Clocaenog and Brechfa wind farm project forest clearance
25th Sep 2015Now a regular provider of services to the renewables industry, Spencer was in action once again earlier this year, preparing two forestry sites in readiness for contractors to carry out wind turbine installations.
Whilst over the past few years solar farms have become more prevalent, wind farms continue to be constructed, with Clocaenog Forest in Denbighshire and Brechfa West Forest in Carmarthenshire lined-up to become two significant new sites.
Spencer were sub-contracted by Natural Resources Wales – on behalf of main developer RWE Innogy UK – to carry out a managed clearance operation in both locations. The projects began in autumn 2014 and were completed on schedule in spring 2015, an impressive outcome considering the scale of the areas in question.
Spencer worked on both sites simultaneously that combined, covered an area of around 100 hectares of coniferous forest. The work in each location utilised 30-tonne Doosan excavators fitted with FAE mulching heads that carefully whole-tree mulched the standing crop.
At one point during the operation, the trees were large enough for a recoverable product to be produced. As a result, Spencer dispatched additional machinery, including a harvester and a forwarder, to fell and process the larger material that was subsequently processed into woodchip biomass.
The successful conclusion of these latest projects means that Spencer has now been involved with the preparation for four large-scale wind farm installations across the UK and the company continues to carry out its work for the forestry and wider civil construction industries.
