Site 6 = Blackford Energy Park 500MW
(ECU application in progress)

Sixth site (Blackford Energy Park) Owner = Noriker Power (45% owned by Equinor formerly known as Statoil)

This is the same owner as site 3, it uses the site 3 access track, and is in effect an extension of the site.

See the project website here = https://blackfordenergypark.com/

Physical Size = 32.8 acres (equivalent to 21 football fields)

Time line for construction = to start Q1 2028, to go online Q4 2029

How long lease period = 40 years

Power Output = 500MW, Capacity = 1GWh release over 2 hour period

Energy Consents Unit reference = ECU00006121 Application LIVE July 2025

Aberdeenshire Council Planning Enquiry Ref: ENQ/2025/0428 and APP/2025/1152

790 public objections have been recorded on the ECU website.

Aberdeenshire Council submitted their response to the ECU on 12th March 2026 - see APP/2025/1152 for full details.

Aberdeenshire Council as Statutory Consultees on the project have come back with an OBJECT decision to the Project unless certain stipulated conditions are met.

The conditions stipulated by the Council will need to be met by the developer, in most cases prior to commencement of the project build, and be signed off by the Council. If conditions are not met then the proposal would result in ‘impacts that are not acceptable’.

For more detail on what the conditional factors are please see links on Aberdeenshire Council planning portal.

In summary this is a good outcome and we as a group will be looking at what it practically means for the project but our hope would be that the ECU allocate a Reporter to scrutinise the developer's plans in more depth.

We are now waiting for the ECU to process all representations made to them - we will then know if the application will go straight for decision, or if a public inquiry will be held.

We held a Public Meeting at Rothienorman Greenview Centre on Tuesday 19th August at 7pm to review the developers submitted reports for this application - CLICK HERE for a copy of the slides.

Click here for copies of our TEMPLATE OBJECTION EMAIL, a TEMPLATE OBJECTION LETTER or here for BACKGROUND DOCUMENT

Expiry Date for Comment was Tuesday 26th August 2025

UPDATE 1 - The developer has submitted 3 new documents after the closing date for representations, an updated Noise Report, an updated Community Wealth Report and an updated Construction & Traffic Management Plan - you can find these on the ECU website.

UPDATE 2 - Additional documents have been sent to the ECU by concerned residents - one for "Fire & Snow" click here to review, and one for "Acoustic Update" click here to review.

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As well as the battery storage, this proposal includes 4500 solar PV panels, which will generate electricity on site.

Bear in mind, they say that it will take 8MWh to run the site (mainly air-conditioning units to cool the batteries), but these solar panels will only generate 2MWh - so a quarter of what they need to power the site - no excess will be exported back to the grid annually.

Major issue with this site is water run off - they are creating terraces, then concrete bases for all the batteries - they plan to slow release the water run off into the eastern brook - this will then effect the private water supplies of all the properties that are downstream, where it goes into the old mill ponds and onward into the Black Burn and into Rothienorman.

Dr Frank Richards has done some modelling of the potential smoke, fire and water run off if there was an incident at the proposed 500MW Blackford Energy Park - this was delivered to the Fyvie, Rothienorman & Monquhitter Community Council meeting on 25th March 2025. It shows that lethal fumes from a fire would reach Rothienorman village within 2 minutes, and that the water run off from fire fighting will contaminate the Black Burn which also runs directly into the village - download a copy of the presentation HERE