Hydro is inviting the public to an open meeting on the Haugshornet wind park on Tuesday, 30 August, to divulge preliminary findings from an impact study.
The meeting will be held in the Vonheim assembly hall in the town of Haugsbygda, in Møre og Romsdal County, at 6:30 p.m.
"The point of the meeting is to inform the public of our preliminary findings from the impact study. We also seek input and responses, so that the impact assessment process proceeds and concludes in the best possible way," says Sverre Trollnes, project manager for the Haugshornet wind park.
The wind park, planned by Hydro on the island of Gurskøy in Sande Municipality, will have a 70 MW (megawatt) power capacity. Annual electricity output will be about 180 GWh (gigawatt hours), comparable to the current power consumption of households in the nearby municipalities of Hærøy, Sande, Ulstein and Hæreid.
The planned area for the wind park is approximately 7.8 square kilometers and lies in a mountainous region between the communities of Gursken and Sædalen on Gurskøy.
Hydro has submitted a report on the wind park to the Norwegian Water Resources and Energy Directorate (NVE). After receiving the report, the NVE prepared an impact assessment program that was subject to a round of public hearings before its certification on 2 March 2004.
The impact study is now underway. Hydro plans to send a concession application for the wind park to the NVE before the end of 2005. The NVE will then subject the application to a hearing before a concession is awarded.