THE Belfast-based wind farm subsidiary of energy giant SSE earned more than £100 million in profit last year, new accounts show.
Documents filed with Companies House show SSE Renewables Onshore Windfarm Holdings, which is registered at Millennium House on Belfast's Great Victoria Street, posted a pre-tax profit of £103.7m for the year ending March 31 2022.
It marked a 22 per cent jump on its performance from the previous year and puts the wind farm subsidiary in pole position to be among the most profitable Northern Ireland domiciled businesses of the past year.
Last week, its parent owner SSE plc pledged to reinvest any “additional” profits resulting from sky-high wholesale power prices into building new UK energy assets.
Although based in Belfast city centre, SSE Renewables Onshore Windfarm Holdings has no employees and is essentially a holding company for the energy giant's onshore wind assets in the UK.
The company listed nine directors for the latest reporting period, with the highest paid receiving around £1.1m per year in remuneration.
The holding company does include the Belfast-based SSE Renewables Services, which had 264 staff on its books last year.
The biggest income in the year to March came via major wind farms in South Lanarkshire and Fort Augustus in Scotland.
SSE Renewables Onshore Windfarm Holdings reported assets of £550m last year, which after paying its creditors, left the wind farm business with shareholder funds of £283.6m for last year, just over £100m more than March 2021.
The accounts also show the holding company had £16.7m cut from its corporation tax bill due to the "effect of revenues exempt from taxation". It left the company with a tax bill of just £3m.
SSE Renewables owns 121.5MW (megawatts) of onshore wind farms around the north, including the 73MW Slieve Kirk scheme in Co Derry, the largest wind farm in Northern Ireland.
It also owns the Tievenameenta wind farm along the Tyrone and Donegal border and the Bessy Bell wind farms between Omagh and Newtownstewart.
