Four months since the public launch of the Islay Energy Community Benefit Society Ltd (IECBS), members gathered on 13th May for the first AGM of the Society. Jenni Minto, Secretary IECBS, introduced the meeting, saying “The proposal was to raise funds towards the Community Wind Turbine through a community share offer. It felt like a very big ask, but when the offer closed we had reached the fabulous total of £535k”. No less than 80% of the investors are from Islay, Jura and Colonsay which reflects the support from within the community.

The main objective of the meeting was to elect a new Board of Directors to replace the original three Founder Directors who stood down. There can be a total of ten Directors, including three representing the Board of Islay Energy Trust. With 14 people putting their names forward, there was a wealth of talent and experience to choose from. The new Board are Isabel Coughlin, Scott Currie, Donald Ewen Darroch, Mairead MacKechnie, Ken McLean, Margaret Rozga and John Trawber. They are joined by George Dean, Jenni Minto and Malcolm Ogilvie, as the IET appointees.

Once the formal business of the AGM was concluded, Colin Anderson, Project Manager, explained the timeline of the construction process for the turbine, illustrating his presentation with pictures from the recently installed fourth Gigha turbine, the same model Enercon E33, as the community turbine for Islay. He said that we could have “bragging rights” over Gigha, because our turbine will be considerably taller, the height of the one of Gigha being constrained by planning constraints. It is also predicted that ours will generate more electricity as being on a windier site.