Northern Ireland Energy Minister Nigel Dodds has welcomed the opening of Northern Ireland's latest wind farm at Lough Hill.

The six turbine development is owned by Renewable Energy Systems (RES) and has a capacity of 7.8MW which is sufficient to provide enough electricity to power 4,400 homes.

RES is the largest single wind farm operator in Northern Ireland with over 100MW of wind capacity. Globally, it has nearly 2,000MW of operating capacity including the world's largest (278MW) wind farm in the USA.

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The Minister said: "Renewables development is critically important for us in Northern Ireland. We are too heavily dependent on imported fossil fuels for our energy requirements and need to address this infrastructural weakness together with its consequences for our environment and for our energy supply security.

"It is important that we overcome the obstacles to renewables development. The recently published Electrical Grid Study considers the potential for increased renewables in Northern Ireland and the Irish Republic. It focuses on the infrastructural strengthening that would be required to accommodate an increase in renewables by 2020."

(VB/JM)