Milestone project for Scotland

SgurrEnergy continues to work with ScottishPower, the biggest developer and operator of onshore wind energy in the UK, on the development of Europe’s largest wind farm, Whitelee. With a capacity of 322MW from 140 turbines the project will provide ‘over 11% of the 2010 Scottish Executive’s renewable energy target (18% of all electricity generation in Scotland), and 2.4% of the UK wide target for 10% of electricity generation from renewables by 2010.’ (www.bwea.com).

At the time of writing, the UK has 134 operational projects with a capacity of 1937 MW of clean energy to the national grid (www.bwea.com). Located on Eaglesham Moor, 10 miles south of Glasgow, the Whitelee site covers an area of 55km². This project is expected to become operational in 2008, with completion (including visitor centre) in 2009. SgurrEnergy has provided ongoing technical support to this milestone project for ScottishPower and Scotland, addressing a wide range of technical issues.

We have installed and managed four 50m anemometer masts on the site, using the data from these masts to guide the layout optimisation process. The site has a complex distribution of commercial forestry, and so we have developed new wind flow modelling techniques to assess the energy yield across the site, looking not just at the present day but right through the life of the wind farm and the forestry surrounding it.

SgurrEnergy also provided technical support in discussions with the turbine suppliers, carrying out wind regime modelling to identify areas of the site that may have more aggressive wind regimes in terms of turbulence intensity and wind shear. We are currently developing a power performance assessment methodology with the turbine supplier, taking into account the size of the wind farm and the complex forestry surrounding it. This work is ongoing.

Richard Boddington, Wind Analysis Manager commented, “SgurrEnergy has been involved with the Whitelee project for several years and the scale of the development has thrown up various technical and planning issues which have been unique to this project. After all the work that’s been put in by all parties it’s great to see that the project is now preparing to move into the construction phase and we look forward to providing continuing support during this phase and beyond to ScottishPower”.

If you have any questions about wind energy please contact Richard Boddington, Wind Analysis Manager on 0141 433 4650 or email Richard.boddington@sgurrenergy.com

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