Whitelee, Europe's largest onshore windfarm, operated by ScottishPower Renewables, on Eaglesham Moor, south of Glasgow. (Credit: Scottish Government/Russell Fallis)Iberdrola, through its British subsidiary ScottishPower Renewables, has successfully completed the expansion of Whitelee wind farm in Scotland, increasing its capacity from 322 megawatts (MW) to 539 MW. Located south of Glasgow, before its expansion Whitelee already had the largest installed capacity of any wind farm in Europe, and has now solidified its position as one of the largest wind power facilities in the world.
This rise in capacity has been achieved through the installation of 75 wind turbines manufactured by the French company Alstom: 69 ECO 100 wind turbines, each with a capacity of 3 MW and 6 ECO 74 turbines, each with a capacity of 1.67 MW.
Annual output at Whitelee will be equivalent to the electricity consumption of more than 300,000 Scottish households and will prevent the emission of 840,000 tonnes of CO2 every year.
This facility has become a symbol throughout Scotland of the acceptance of wind power as an engine for progress and job creation. Some 350 Iberdrola and local suppliers’ employees have worked on the expansion of the wind farm and the full-time workforce assigned to operation and maintenance has reached 49 people, making it one of the largest in the world.
A key factor in Whitelee becoming a benchmark wind farm in the UK is the success of the Whitelee Windfarm Visitor Center which has been visited by 270,000 people since it was first opened in 2009.
Built within the wind farm complex, the center includes a range of interactive displays and exhibitions. A separate learning hub, staffed by Glasgow Science Center experts, caters for primary and secondary school visits. Workshop sessions are tailored to specific age groups to teach pupils more about the technology and science behind renewable energy. It is estimated that hundreds of thousands of additional visitors have directly accessed the site’s 90 km (56 miles) of tracks and paths, popular for a diverse range of outdoors activities, from walking and cycling to horse riding and stargazing.
Among the other offshore facilities that are being developed by Iberdrola in the UK we can highlight the West Of Duddon Sands (WoDS), which is set to be the first such wind farm ever commissioned by the company and will have a capacity of 389 MW, and East Anglia Offshore Wind, the largest offshore complex in the company’s portfolio, with a capacity of up to 7,200 MW.
In Scotland, Iberdrola is also undertaking projects involving two other promising technologies: tidal power, through its Hammerfest project, and wave energy, by way of the Pelamis initiative.
