Source | Energia Group
Energy utility company Energia Renewables (Dublin, Ireland and Belfast, Northern Ireland) has found a new use for a decommissioned turbine blade, which was replaced on the Meenadreen Wind Farm back in 2020. Working with BladeBridge (Cork, Ireland), a startup formed from the U.S. academic project Re-Wind Network, the groups have transformed the end-of-life (EOL) wind blade into a new site amenity in the form of a shelter and seating area on the Leghowney Loop, a popular trail which passes through the wind farm.
Design companies like BladeBridge are helping to repurpose decommissioned blades and turn them into functional street furniture, bus shelters and even pedestrian bridges. The company works with wind farm operators with redundant blades and public bodies looking for low-carbon options for pedestrian bridges, bus shelters, public benches and other solutions.
The Meenadreen blade is the first time BladeBridge has worked on a wind farm amenity project, where the blade will return to its original home to continue its working life in a new form. Aligned to the UN Sustainability Development Goals, and with sustainability at the core of everything it does, Energia commissioned BladeBridge in an effort to enhance the site for walkers on the Leghowney Loop trail, promote the circular economy and raise public awareness of the possibilities and need to repurpose waste materials through sustainable resource management.The completed blade project consists of an eye-catching shelter, stylish picnic table structure with seating and standalone benches. Simon Dennehy from Perch Design, BladeBridge’s creative director, says he believes in the importance of highlighting blade engineering features in any new form. “These blades are amazing, organic, undulating and asymmetric structures and I want to preserve these design aspects so that people will know that they are sitting on, or standing under, something that was once part of a wind turbine, which will now last for many more decades.”
The centerpiece of the walkers’ rest area is the shelter, which is dedicated to one of the engineers who worked on the site, Jimmy Kelly from Carrowbeg in Co. Mayo, who was an Irish wind energy pioneer.
“Jimmy was a renewable energy expert and enthusiast,” says Brian Mullen, head of Energia Renewables Operations. “He generated his own electricity at home, was an organic farmer and even made his own Mayo wine. An expert in too many fields to list, Jimmy would no doubt accuse us of making a fuss. However, he’d be blown away to see a blade he’d worked on transformed and still in use.”
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