Introducing W.J. Drennan Ltd

The company is owned by Northern Ireland businessman Will Drennan. Will started his working life hauling dry freight around Northern Ireland and the mainland. His love of distance driving and trucks saw him set up Drennan Transport Ltd in 1970 with 1 Flatbed Bedford Truck running freight as far as Europe. Today, over 5 decades on they run their own fleet of 18 vehicles complimented by a network of reliable subcontractors. They employ over 30 staff and have a reputation for getting the job done, first time, every time and on budget.

Will had always loved the Northeast of England, the area and people being very similar to his hometown of Tobermore in County Londonderry. When High Hedley Hope Farm came on the market in 2007, he jumped at the opportunity to acquire. The farm was already producing electricity with 3 wind turbines on the west of the property and 4 more planned to the east and a very brief conversation between the farm manager and his agronomist, albeit 4 years on, led to the building of the High Hedley Anaerobic Digestion and Biogas Plant. The Plant commenced at 500kW, sufficient to power approximately 800 residential properties, but was designed to allow an increase of 100% to 1MW simply by adding more food waste and installing a second CHP, which was planned for phase II at the beginning of 2016. Unfortunately, at that time a second grid connection was not available, and we believed we were stuck at the initial CHP 500kW/h size. However, in 2017 we identified a medium pressure gas grid approximately 3.4 miles away in Esh Winning. This distance to connect to a gas main would normally be too costly, but as 1.4 miles was a soft dig over the owners own land it made the opportunity feasible. This was funded in 2018 and came into operation early 2019. A major benefit of upgrading our Biogas to Biomethane for injection into the natural gas grid, is we now are not double the plants original output capability, and closer to 1,350kW/h electric equivalent.

The farm has modernised and expanded into the Dairy Business with 600 Dairy Cows. The Slurry from these animals provides a stable biology to the Biogas Digesters. The AD process residue, Digestate, a highly nutritional Biofertiliser will go back on the land and improve the grass quality, to be fed back to the Dairy Herd. A real circular economy with ZERO waste. The heat for the pasteurisation process, the heating of the Digesters comes from the CHP cooling jacket at the plant. About 60% of the electricity generated will provide all of the electrical requirements of the businesses on-site, with the balance going to the electricity and gas grids for use by local residents and businesses alike.

High Hedley Biogas Plant started exporting electricity to the National Grid in December 2014 and Biomethane to the Natural Gas Grid in 2019.