Severn Trent Water will be powering its sewage plant near Leicester with wind by Christmas after building a new turbine there.

The 130m-high turbine dubbed ‘Windy’ by local schoolchildren is expected to generate around 5,000 megawatt hours of electricity a year, enough to supply around 1,500 homes with power.

Jon Beeson, renewable energy specialist at Severn Trent Water said: “A huge amount of energy is needed to provide water and waste water services to our customers. Windy will help us to limit the amount of electricity we need to take from the national grid.”

It’s part of a bigger push for ‘green’ power, he added: “We’re already generating around 24% of our company’s energy needs from renewable sources including sewage, hydro and energy from crops grown on our own farmland. This, along with other initiatives, will see us generate more than 30% of our energy sustainably by 2015.”

The Wanlip sewage treatment works won’t be the only ones powered by wind as building begins on two turbines at Severn Trent’s Derby site this week. Another is scheduled to go up next week at its Nottingham site in Newthorpe.

The company recently announced its new boss taking over next year will be Liv Garfield, bringing the number of women in charge of FTSE 100 firms to a grand total of four.